Simon Armitage: Extract from Out of the Blue

Context
Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in West Yorkshire, where he still
lives. He studied Geography at Portsmouth University and
completed an MA at Manchester University, where he wrote his
dissertation [dissertation: A long essay on a specific topic, often
following a strong line of argument or giving a lot of detail about the
topic. ] on the effects of television violence on young offenders.
Afterwards he worked as a probation officer, a job which influenced
many of the poems in his first collection, Zoom! (1989).
His poetry demonstrates a strong concern for social issues, as well
as drawing on his Yorkshire roots. Armitage is often noted for his
"ear" holding a strong sense of rhythm and metre [metre: The
rhythm in a line of poetry; the number of 'metric feet' (units in a
pattern of rhythms) in a line of verse. Each foot usually contains one
stressed and one or more unstressed syllables. ].
Armitage is not only a poet: as well as publishing 15 collections of
poetry, he has written for film, television and radio, completed two
novels as well as non-fiction books, and writes the lyrics for his band
The Scaremongers. He has also written translations of the Middle
English tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Homer's
Odyssey.
Subject matter
Armitage wrote Out of the Blue for the 5th anniversary of '9/11' the
attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11th September
2001 in which 2,976 people died, including 67 British people.
The poem is a long one (over 15 pages). It tells the story of that
morning from the point of view of a man who works on the 80th floor
of the North tower the first tower to be hit and the last to fall. It
recalls how, on an ordinary bright clear September morning,
ordinary people went to work in their ordinary offices and of how
the world changed in two moments of sudden, astonishing violence.
In this extract, we learn that the narrator is a man who appears in
one of the many news clips that were repeatedly beamed out across
the world that morning and for many days afterwards. The clip
shows people high up in the burning tower, clinging to the windows
as they escape the burning heat inside. One figure is clearly seen
waving a white shirt around and around. It is this figure that

Armitage chooses as his narrator [narrator: The teller of a story; the

voice in a text that describes or narrates the events of the plot;
either a character in the story, or an authorial voice who gives a
commentary on events but doesn't take part. ].
In the poem, the narrator is desperately signalling for help. He then
realises that he has been spotted and he begins to talk to one of the
people who has spotted him the reader of the poem. This creates a
delicate, intimate, human connection, which might seem full of
hope. This connection, however, is tragic. By twirling and turning his
shirt, the narrator is able to attract the attention of the world but
only over the television. The help the narrator needs, therefore,
simply cannot come. Both narrator and reader are helpless. The
narrator, however, is doomed to die.
Form and structure
Form
The poem is in short, four-lined stanzas [stanza: A group of lines of
poetry that make up a unit - like a paragraph in a piece of prose; a
verse. ]. This form suggests the narrators attempts to maintain selfcontrol. The variations in line lengths, however, betray his changing
emotions. The lines vary from short, clear thoughts and questions
("you have picked me out", "So when will you come?", "A bird goes
by") to a desperate awareness that his life is poised above an
"appalling" void. The last phrase (or sentence) of stanza five mirrors
the falling, tumbling motion of the people falling thousands of feet to
their death:
"Appalling
That others like me
Should be wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling."
The line goes first backwards (from "appalling" to "that others")
then forwards again, expressing the spiral movement of the falling
bodies.
Structure
This extract is taken from a key passage towards the end of the
poem. Both towers have been hit by planes. The people inside the
buildings, above the impact points, realise they cannot escape down
the lifts or stairs. The building is burning and the occupants are

trying to escape the heat and smoke but the only way out is
through the windows, impossibly high above the streets below.
The extract begins with a note of hope. He is on TV noticed by a TV
viewer somewhere across the world. But this point of connection is
meaningless. While the image is clear, the pain, the terror, and the
meaning of that image are not: "Do you think you are watching,
watching a man shaking crumbs/or pegging out washing?" In stanza
four he is confronting his limited options. By the end his death is
inevitable.
Language and imagery
Language
The challenge of the poet is to put this extreme event into words. To
describe what it looks like (to a viewer on TV) and imagine what it
feels like (to a person trapped inside the building). Armitage plays
up this difficultly using everyday, accessible language and ordinary
imagery throughout the poem. For example:
"picked me out" as we might pick out someone from a family
portrait.
"white cotton shirt" as we might put on in the morning.
"shaking crumbs"; "pegging out washing" as people might do
everyday at home.
These images highlight the ordinary lives that are being lost and the
ordinary moments that will be denied the victims. They also express
the viewers inability to comprehend what is happening. We simply
dont have the vocabulary to express it.
Armitage evokes a sense of powerlessness by using repetition
[repetition: A word or phrase that is used again and again so that it
forms a pattern of sound or meaning, often for emphasis or to make
a particular point. ], either of words or of sounds ("twirling, turning"
or "waving, waving"). This expresses the pointless repetition of
actions (such as the man waving his shirt). Nothing can make any
difference now.
One word the narrator uses to express his sense of horror is
"appalling". The only way he can make it stronger is by repeating it.
This is a word we might apply to the weather on a very rainy day.
The man in fact uses this word to describe the thousands of feet he
will have to drop to his death when he can no longer grip the ledge

he is clinging to. The emotional power of the poem lies in this

understated use of language, the collision of the mundane
[mundane: Something which is dull or every-day. Very ordinary. ]
(ordinary) words and the horrific subject matter.
Imagery
This section of the poem is drawn from a TV image and Armitage
plays with this idea. He exposes the distance between the viewer
and the event and the narrators attempt to distance himself from
his inevitable fate (jumping from the window). So while the viewer
sees the strange image of a "white cotton shirt" the narrator has to
remind us what this image is: "In fact I am waving, waving."
For him, the action is simple and clear. It is a "fact" but the tragedy
of the poem is in the way the observer and the narrator are at once
so close and yet so far away. The "fact" of the waving is not clear.
What has happened is incomprehensible [incomprehensible:
Impossible to understand. ], and the image of waving can still be
misinterpreted [misinterpreted: Understood a text to say something
which it does not/ can not. Misunderstood. ]: is it waving hello,
goodbye, calling for help or, as it turns out, surrendering to
inevitable death (as in waving the white flag of surrender)?
The event is so unreal that our interpretation [interpretation: A
specific understanding of what a text is saying; a view of the text.
There is usually more than one possible interpretation. ] of images
becomes unreal. The narrator criticises this response in us in stanza
three. Yet he also finds himself using familiar images to hide the
appalling truth of his dilemma. He describes himself in line 16 as not
being on the point of "leaving, diving". Leaving suggests an image of
leaving work, something millions of people do everyday. Diving
suggests an elegant movement, an adventure. What he means,
however, and what he must confront, is that he will need to let go of
the edge and plunge to his death on the pavement below.
Attitudes, themes and ideas
The main focus on the poem is on how hard it is to understand an
event like this. When we think back on that day, how do we connect
meaningfully with the people who died? This is made doubly difficult
because so many people watched the events unfold on television.
The victims need for help was equalled only by the viewers inability
to give it. This terrible irony [irony: A literary device where there is a
mismatch between the actual meaning and what is implied (sarcasm

is a heavy form of irony). Dramatic irony is where the audience

knows something crucial of which characters are blissfully
unaware. ] is reflected in the final stanza where positive images are
turned on their head:
"Sirens below are wailing, firing" sees the sound of ambulances
rising from the ground become a threat or a torment (the sirens are
firing like guns).
"I am failing, flagging." returns us to the image of the opening but
the neat irony that turns "waving" to "flagging" again hides the
appalling reality of what is happening. The emotional power is in the
understatement [understatement: A literary device where a writer
deliberately makes something seem less serious or important than it
is, with the effect of creating humour or emphasis. ].
Understatement is used because we have no way of adequately
[adequately: Something is done/ exists to a good enough standard to
be acceptable. ] understanding something so senseless, so strange,
soappalling. This point is made clear in the only one-word line (in
stanza 6): the poem is about "believing" your eyes and
understanding the unimaginable decisions those victims had to face.
They knew they were going to die, could see people falling past
them, and needed to make a final connection with loved ones who
were still a phone-call away ("do you see me, my love"). Each dot on
the TV screen was not an abstract [abstract: Not concrete: an idea
or concept. For example 'love' or 'evil'. ] image but a real person
about to become one of the statistical 2,976 who died.
Comparison
Mametz Wood both of these poems deal with death on a large
scale and the relationship between personal tragedy and social
history. In Armitages poem, the dead are preserved in TV images,
their fate made strange and distant by the medium of television. In
Sheers work, the dead are preserved by the earth, the real trauma
of their deaths made strange and distant by the process of natural
decay.
The Charge of the Light Brigade an unusual comparison, but both
poems work as public memorials for disasters that became
widespread media events. Both poems also describe victims caught
up in a disaster not of their making. The difference lies in the way
the disasters are presented. Tennyson elevates the soldiers to
heroes. Armitage shows the link between the victims and the

spectators is the same. They were as ordinary as us and that is

where the tragedy lies.
Sample question
Whatever grade you are working towards, the basic structure of any
answer will be the same:
The introduction will explain the relevance of the question to what
feelings the poem expresses and an overview of the story the poem
tells.
Paragraph that covers form.
Paragraph that covers structure.
Paragraph that covers language (sound and verbal imagery).
Conclusion: You then conclude on the meaning that emerges from
this.
For each point, you need to provide evidence (a quote or reference)
and an explanation.
Question
How does the poet present the experience of conflict in Out of the
Blue?
Answer
Points you could make:
In Out of the Blue the conflict is not between soldiers on a battlefield
but between unseen terrorists and civilians.
This creates the main conflict in the poem: between the
extraordinary consequences of terrorist action and the ordinary lives
of the victims.
Armitage starts by using the form to illustrate the subject: the poem
looks like a tower, with at least seven lines leaning out of it like the
narrator.
He then starts by drawing a direct connection between the narrator
and the viewer ("you").
This shows that while the experience of conflict (the destruction of
the Twin Towers) is extraordinary and strange, the people caught up
in it are just like us.

Armitage also uses contrasting language to express this conflict

between the ordinary and the extraordinary: shocking images such
as the "building burning" and "soul worth saving" are contrasted
with domestic images such as the "white cotton shirt" and "pegging
out washing".
He uses strange imagery to suggest how unreal the experience of
conflict is (heat is "bullying", he may be "leaving, diving", people are
"wind-milling, wheeling" like children playing).
The use of ing forms run throughout the poem (only 8 lines out of
28 do not have it). This present continuous form shows how time
seems to be suspended, just as the man is suspended on the
window-sill.
The ordinary language shows an emotional restraint. The ing form
shows he is clinging to the present. Together they express the main
feeling of the poem. The most difficult experience in conflict is
having to confront the reality of your own coming death.