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Physical
Raw and urgent, these poems are hymns to the male body – to male friendship and male love – muscular, sometimes shocking, but always deeply moving. We are witness here to an almost religious celebration of the flesh: a flesh vital with the vulnerability of love and loss, to desire and its departure. In an extraordinary blend of McMillan’s own colloquial Yorkshire rhythms with a sinewy, Metaphysical music and Thom Gunn’s torque and speed – ‘your kiss was deep enough to stand in’ – the poems in this first collection confront what it is to be a man and interrogate the very idea of masculinity. This is poetry where every instance of human connection, from the casual encounter to the intimate relationship, becomes redeemable and revelatory.
Dispensing with conventional punctuation, the poet is attentive and alert to the quality of breathing, giving the work an extraordinary sense of being vividly poised and present – drawing lines that are deft, lyrical and perfectly pitched from a world of urban dereliction. An elegant stylist and unfashionably honest poet, McMillan’s eye and ear are tuned, exactly, to both the mechanics of the body and the miracles of the heart.
Dispensing with conventional punctuation, the poet is attentive and alert to the quality of breathing, giving the work an extraordinary sense of being vividly poised and present – drawing lines that are deft, lyrical and perfectly pitched from a world of urban dereliction. An elegant stylist and unfashionably honest poet, McMillan’s eye and ear are tuned, exactly, to both the mechanics of the body and the miracles of the heart.
53 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2015
16 people are currently reading
1378 people want to read
About the author
Andrew McMillan
36 books105 followersAndrew McMillan was born in 1988. He now lectures in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. He studied English Literature w/ Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and then an MA in modernism from University College London.
His first full-length collection, ‘physical’, will be published by Jonathan Cape in July 2015. This follows three highly successful pamphlets, the first of which, every salt advance, was published in 2009 by Red Squirrel Press. A second pamphlet, ’ the moon is a supporting player’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in October 2011 and a selection of his poet can be found in the seminal new anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets as well as in Best British Poetry 2013. A new pamphlet length poem, ‘protest of the physical’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in late 2013.
As well as his permanent position at Liverpool John Moores University, Andrew has taught poetry for Sheffield University, Edge Hill University and the Poetry School.
Andrew is currently one of the writers working for national charity First Story, and has been Poet-in-Residence for Off the Page , the LGBT community of Bournemouth, Sea View Day Centre in Poole, Basingstoke Bourough Council and the Regional Youth Theatre Festival; writer-in-residence for the Watershed Landscape Project, Growing Places arts and sustainability project in Newcastle and Apprentice Poet-in-Residence for the Ilkley Literature Festival In 2010 he was commissioned by IMove, the cultural olympiad body for Yorkshire, to produce a new sequence of work which was featured on Radio 4’s Today Programme. He regularly runs workshops for amateur poetry groups and in various community,school and higher education settings as well as for Sheffield Theatres and various literary feativals. 2012 saw him named a ‘new voice’ by both Latitude Festival and Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
He was founding editor of Cake Magazine alongside Martha Sprackland: http://www.cake-poetry.co.uk/
In 2014 Andrew won a substantial Northern Writers Award from New Writing North.
His first full-length collection, ‘physical’, will be published by Jonathan Cape in July 2015. This follows three highly successful pamphlets, the first of which, every salt advance, was published in 2009 by Red Squirrel Press. A second pamphlet, ’ the moon is a supporting player’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in October 2011 and a selection of his poet can be found in the seminal new anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets as well as in Best British Poetry 2013. A new pamphlet length poem, ‘protest of the physical’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in late 2013.
As well as his permanent position at Liverpool John Moores University, Andrew has taught poetry for Sheffield University, Edge Hill University and the Poetry School.
Andrew is currently one of the writers working for national charity First Story, and has been Poet-in-Residence for Off the Page , the LGBT community of Bournemouth, Sea View Day Centre in Poole, Basingstoke Bourough Council and the Regional Youth Theatre Festival; writer-in-residence for the Watershed Landscape Project, Growing Places arts and sustainability project in Newcastle and Apprentice Poet-in-Residence for the Ilkley Literature Festival In 2010 he was commissioned by IMove, the cultural olympiad body for Yorkshire, to produce a new sequence of work which was featured on Radio 4’s Today Programme. He regularly runs workshops for amateur poetry groups and in various community,school and higher education settings as well as for Sheffield Theatres and various literary feativals. 2012 saw him named a ‘new voice’ by both Latitude Festival and Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
He was founding editor of Cake Magazine alongside Martha Sprackland: http://www.cake-poetry.co.uk/
In 2014 Andrew won a substantial Northern Writers Award from New Writing North.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
February 23, 2020
One would think that in today’s super-fast, hyper-connected, over-digitised world, poetry would be far more popular than it actually is. Why read long books when you can snatch a couple of verses here and there? Turns out that poetry is something like a black hole of literature: Language gets sucked into its quantum maw, and then broken down and mashed together into something indescribably dense and primal.
A perfect example is Andrew McMillan’s volume of poems, which despite its slimness gives no indication of the depths and heights of experience it explores within. A particular bugbear of mine is the near pornographic cover, only rendered ‘artful’ by being a black-and-white photo. The cover, combined with the title ‘physical’ (which seems so diminutive with its sad-looking lower-case ‘p’), seems to indicate this collection is about the physicality of hot sweaty sex.
But Guardian reviewer Ben Wilkinson hits the nail on the head when he describes these poems as ‘hymns to intimacy’:
Adept at finding the surreal in the everyday, turning an ear to the lilt of conversation alongside serious (but rarely solipsistic) reflection, McMillan’s verse worries away at what it is to be human, to feel through both the flesh and our emotions, to lose and to love, but most of all, what it means to be a man. In his delicate, frank and piercing interrogations of maleness, this is a poet who looks to assess the state of modern masculinity. He does so in ways that few others currently writing are either willing or able to.
What really struck me about this collection – and the mystery of language in general – is how difficult it is to translate the quotidian into the meaningful. Take a thoroughly mundane event like brushing your teeth, and try to write a poem about it. Or then try your hand at an abstract concept like conveying the psychological messiness of a break-up, or the increasing vulnerability of men in a socio-political context where even the very concept of gender itself has become fluid. One of my favourite poems is ‘the men are weeping in the gym’:
the men are weeping in the gym
using the hand dryer to cover
their sobs their hearts have grown too big
for their chests their chests have grown too big
for their shirts they are dressed like kids
who have forgotten their games kit
they are crying in the toilet
and because they have built themselves
as statues this must mean that God
has entered them
The book is divided into three sections, namely ‘i. physical’, ‘ii. protest of the physical’ and ‘iii. degradation’. The second was the hardest for me to get my head around, as it is a long-form poem that is completely fractured and broken up on the page, like shards of pure thought (McMillan eschews punctuation, which weirdly enough gives both a clarity and a rawness to the writing that a more mannered approach, where you dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, simply would not have had the same impact.)
Examples of standout poems for me were ‘Jacob with the angel’, which takes the Biblical account of an Israelite’s wrestling with an unknown person as a veiled account of a sexual, as opposed to a spiritual, encounter:
taken literally it just happens the way the weather
or the stock market happens
tangling in the unpierced flesh of one another
grappling with the shifting question of each other’s bodies
Later, towards the end:
he sleeps without speaking and on waking
isn’t sure if he has dreamt it
but his youngest notices the thresh marks of wingbeats
on his back and he asks for ink to be brought
he says writing something down keeps it alive
Another favourite of mine is called ‘urination’:
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside
Wilkinson comments:
In an age where poetic voice is often valorised above all else, it is worth praising the emotional force and cerebrally transformative capacities of a poet’s writing. Alongside the effortless scrutiny of the masculine, the way in which McMillan not only writes about the body, but actually writes the body itself, should be celebrated …
There are poems that are uncomfortable to read; there is also a sense of unbearable sadness at times, as in ‘finally’:
… the scent of him has lifted
from the last of the sheets
that he isn’t coming back
that it hasn’t rained
but the birds are pretending that it has
so they can sing
But then McMillan’s true purpose behind this collection can be discerned in the concluding line of 'Jacob with the angel', that ‘writing something down keeps it alive.’ It, of course, being life in all of its pain, glory, mundanity, and transcendence.
A perfect example is Andrew McMillan’s volume of poems, which despite its slimness gives no indication of the depths and heights of experience it explores within. A particular bugbear of mine is the near pornographic cover, only rendered ‘artful’ by being a black-and-white photo. The cover, combined with the title ‘physical’ (which seems so diminutive with its sad-looking lower-case ‘p’), seems to indicate this collection is about the physicality of hot sweaty sex.
But Guardian reviewer Ben Wilkinson hits the nail on the head when he describes these poems as ‘hymns to intimacy’:
Adept at finding the surreal in the everyday, turning an ear to the lilt of conversation alongside serious (but rarely solipsistic) reflection, McMillan’s verse worries away at what it is to be human, to feel through both the flesh and our emotions, to lose and to love, but most of all, what it means to be a man. In his delicate, frank and piercing interrogations of maleness, this is a poet who looks to assess the state of modern masculinity. He does so in ways that few others currently writing are either willing or able to.
What really struck me about this collection – and the mystery of language in general – is how difficult it is to translate the quotidian into the meaningful. Take a thoroughly mundane event like brushing your teeth, and try to write a poem about it. Or then try your hand at an abstract concept like conveying the psychological messiness of a break-up, or the increasing vulnerability of men in a socio-political context where even the very concept of gender itself has become fluid. One of my favourite poems is ‘the men are weeping in the gym’:
the men are weeping in the gym
using the hand dryer to cover
their sobs their hearts have grown too big
for their chests their chests have grown too big
for their shirts they are dressed like kids
who have forgotten their games kit
they are crying in the toilet
and because they have built themselves
as statues this must mean that God
has entered them
The book is divided into three sections, namely ‘i. physical’, ‘ii. protest of the physical’ and ‘iii. degradation’. The second was the hardest for me to get my head around, as it is a long-form poem that is completely fractured and broken up on the page, like shards of pure thought (McMillan eschews punctuation, which weirdly enough gives both a clarity and a rawness to the writing that a more mannered approach, where you dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, simply would not have had the same impact.)
Examples of standout poems for me were ‘Jacob with the angel’, which takes the Biblical account of an Israelite’s wrestling with an unknown person as a veiled account of a sexual, as opposed to a spiritual, encounter:
taken literally it just happens the way the weather
or the stock market happens
tangling in the unpierced flesh of one another
grappling with the shifting question of each other’s bodies
Later, towards the end:
he sleeps without speaking and on waking
isn’t sure if he has dreamt it
but his youngest notices the thresh marks of wingbeats
on his back and he asks for ink to be brought
he says writing something down keeps it alive
Another favourite of mine is called ‘urination’:
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside
Wilkinson comments:
In an age where poetic voice is often valorised above all else, it is worth praising the emotional force and cerebrally transformative capacities of a poet’s writing. Alongside the effortless scrutiny of the masculine, the way in which McMillan not only writes about the body, but actually writes the body itself, should be celebrated …
There are poems that are uncomfortable to read; there is also a sense of unbearable sadness at times, as in ‘finally’:
… the scent of him has lifted
from the last of the sheets
that he isn’t coming back
that it hasn’t rained
but the birds are pretending that it has
so they can sing
But then McMillan’s true purpose behind this collection can be discerned in the concluding line of 'Jacob with the angel', that ‘writing something down keeps it alive.’ It, of course, being life in all of its pain, glory, mundanity, and transcendence.
February 25, 2024
Loss, ends to relations, the comfort of the physical body, love, storms. Without being provocative or expository, the bundle talks about a lot, in an effective and sparse style
there are days
when I don’t miss you or even love
that much anymore
…
the fear is to die untouched love lost
…
there’ve been times I’ve woke and put my arm around a pillow halfdreaming it was you
- Fear of the physical
An impressive bundle, with poems that evoke hookups and the sadness of going out, like:
I miss my bed given over for use
by someone else’s love want what’s mine
to be just mine want a world where not all
will get whatever they are looking for
…
I try to be what’s expected but it
dies without reaching to its fullest extent
- Saturday Night
Choke (almost being broken almost leaving but deciding to tough it out) alludes to an abusive relationship and the limits of the body.
Then there are poems about the nature of love in conjunction with growing up:
every time you fell in love with someone new
you were falling back in love with the first again
…
they were the books through which you filled the gaps that leaving left
the books that where full of their stories
which is your story
which is always the story of a man who left
and the one who must await his return
- Revelations
And A Gift - about how youth and your body is all you can give to the lovers which are not right for you.
At the heart of the bundle is the longest poem, about returning to a place where one had a relationship and love:
I didn’t even know it would be the last love
is giving everything too easily
then staying to try and claw it back
…
there are days
when I don’t miss you or even love
that much anymore
…
the fear is to die untouched love lost
…
there’ve been times I’ve woke and put my arm around a pillow halfdreaming it was you
…
theory we’ve confused happiness
with someone being able to say our name to us
…
I could have
I should have tried harder
- Protest of the physical
Andrew McMillan cuts deep with little words and seems to convey a wisdom and maturity in the bundle that is admirable.
I am keen to read more of his work!
there are days
when I don’t miss you or even love
that much anymore
…
the fear is to die untouched love lost
…
there’ve been times I’ve woke and put my arm around a pillow halfdreaming it was you
- Fear of the physical
An impressive bundle, with poems that evoke hookups and the sadness of going out, like:
I miss my bed given over for use
by someone else’s love want what’s mine
to be just mine want a world where not all
will get whatever they are looking for
…
I try to be what’s expected but it
dies without reaching to its fullest extent
- Saturday Night
Choke (almost being broken almost leaving but deciding to tough it out) alludes to an abusive relationship and the limits of the body.
Then there are poems about the nature of love in conjunction with growing up:
every time you fell in love with someone new
you were falling back in love with the first again
…
they were the books through which you filled the gaps that leaving left
the books that where full of their stories
which is your story
which is always the story of a man who left
and the one who must await his return
- Revelations
And A Gift - about how youth and your body is all you can give to the lovers which are not right for you.
At the heart of the bundle is the longest poem, about returning to a place where one had a relationship and love:
I didn’t even know it would be the last love
is giving everything too easily
then staying to try and claw it back
…
there are days
when I don’t miss you or even love
that much anymore
…
the fear is to die untouched love lost
…
there’ve been times I’ve woke and put my arm around a pillow halfdreaming it was you
…
theory we’ve confused happiness
with someone being able to say our name to us
…
I could have
I should have tried harder
- Protest of the physical
Andrew McMillan cuts deep with little words and seems to convey a wisdom and maturity in the bundle that is admirable.
I am keen to read more of his work!
December 31, 2015
I'm not taking the piss when I say my favourite in this mixed collection is called Urination
January 14, 2019
Book Reviewed by Stacey on www.whisperingstories.com
In Andrew McMillan’s first book, which was nominated for numerous awards and the winner of the 2015 Guardian First Book Award and 2015 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, you will find a collection of poems that are all about the male body.
Now I’m not a poetry expert, nor do I tend to read many poems, plus I’m not male, but I can tell you that the poems are really touching and make you stop and think, I can definitely see why the book was nominated and won awards.
The titles of some of the poems gave me a giggle, such as ‘The Men are Weeping in the Gym’ and ‘The Fact we Almost Killed a Badger is Incidental’, as well as some of the poems themselves – I’m not sure this was the right emotion to have, but it was what I felt.
The book although small really packs a lot in. It is also split into sections too and the wording is sometimes all over the place, but this works for poetry books.
You can tell how much thought went it these poems and how much of a thinker Andrew is. Poets are very creative individuals who never seem to stop contemplating the world and everything around them.
A brilliant piece of literary art and I enjoyed it immensely.
In Andrew McMillan’s first book, which was nominated for numerous awards and the winner of the 2015 Guardian First Book Award and 2015 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, you will find a collection of poems that are all about the male body.
Now I’m not a poetry expert, nor do I tend to read many poems, plus I’m not male, but I can tell you that the poems are really touching and make you stop and think, I can definitely see why the book was nominated and won awards.
The titles of some of the poems gave me a giggle, such as ‘The Men are Weeping in the Gym’ and ‘The Fact we Almost Killed a Badger is Incidental’, as well as some of the poems themselves – I’m not sure this was the right emotion to have, but it was what I felt.
The book although small really packs a lot in. It is also split into sections too and the wording is sometimes all over the place, but this works for poetry books.
You can tell how much thought went it these poems and how much of a thinker Andrew is. Poets are very creative individuals who never seem to stop contemplating the world and everything around them.
A brilliant piece of literary art and I enjoyed it immensely.
June 1, 2017
I love poetry books, I'm surrounded by them, and not entirely sure why. I think it's partly the poet's gift of being able to paint/sing, often with few words, what the prose writer may need several hundred pages to do. And then the magic of rhythm (and rhyme if there) that helps it lodge accessibly in the memory when other written works don't (for me at least).
This was an impulsive buy, they often are in my case. I recall reading Andrew's review (GR friend) which was very positive and remember 'Physical' (small 'p' on the cover)being well received on publication. The sensually simple cover lured me too. It's slim and easy to handle and there is a feeling of gripping the anonymous body on the cover by its waist.
This slim volume is divided into 3 parts:
i physical
ii protest of the physical
iii degradation
The first part does what it says: it hones in on the body, doing whatever it is doing at the time, often a prelude to sexual encounter, often homosexual. Thom Gunn's inspiration breathes through many of the poems; most obviously of course through 'Saturday Night' and its sensual, matter of factness around, gay clubbing.
The second – the attraction of opposites – not merely sexual. Thom Gunn again. Some stark simple lines stick deep in the memory – eg. “the fear is to die untouched love lost”
“ I didn't know it would be the last love
is giving everything too easily
then starting to try and claw it back”
“town that sunk from its centre
like a man winded by a punch
town that bent double carried
young men and women and younger men and women
as long as it could but spinebroken
had to let them go”
The last seems shorter in comparison with the rest – and its focus is on the ageing process, growing up, dying..It includes the powerful 'How to be a Man', written on the death of his grandfather. This poem has as its finale:
“BACKGROUND CHARACTER NOTES
you thought you knew how men
were meant to grieve
you thought all men felt distant from their fathers
you thought all men grieved like small Greek women
in black who say the bread still needs to be baked (italics here)
you thought men simply carried on
when your dad unfolded in front of you
nobody had taught you how to fix him back together”.
4* but I strongly suspect that with each re-read it will climb further..
Recommended to anyone who enjoys reading poetry.
This was an impulsive buy, they often are in my case. I recall reading Andrew's review (GR friend) which was very positive and remember 'Physical' (small 'p' on the cover)being well received on publication. The sensually simple cover lured me too. It's slim and easy to handle and there is a feeling of gripping the anonymous body on the cover by its waist.
This slim volume is divided into 3 parts:
i physical
ii protest of the physical
iii degradation
The first part does what it says: it hones in on the body, doing whatever it is doing at the time, often a prelude to sexual encounter, often homosexual. Thom Gunn's inspiration breathes through many of the poems; most obviously of course through 'Saturday Night' and its sensual, matter of factness around, gay clubbing.
The second – the attraction of opposites – not merely sexual. Thom Gunn again. Some stark simple lines stick deep in the memory – eg. “the fear is to die untouched love lost”
“ I didn't know it would be the last love
is giving everything too easily
then starting to try and claw it back”
“town that sunk from its centre
like a man winded by a punch
town that bent double carried
young men and women and younger men and women
as long as it could but spinebroken
had to let them go”
The last seems shorter in comparison with the rest – and its focus is on the ageing process, growing up, dying..It includes the powerful 'How to be a Man', written on the death of his grandfather. This poem has as its finale:
“BACKGROUND CHARACTER NOTES
you thought you knew how men
were meant to grieve
you thought all men felt distant from their fathers
you thought all men grieved like small Greek women
in black who say the bread still needs to be baked (italics here)
you thought men simply carried on
when your dad unfolded in front of you
nobody had taught you how to fix him back together”.
4* but I strongly suspect that with each re-read it will climb further..
Recommended to anyone who enjoys reading poetry.
January 26, 2020
As I reread this 54 page book, looking for poetry to quote, I realize I am reading it much clearer. McMillan has a voice on the page that I have not heard in my limited amount of poetry I've read. The raw youthful, yet mature energy that drives every line lets me clearly see the pictures the author was painting for me.
"Urination"
maybe it's that I dream of being bumped
knocked from my aim by a stranger
the briefest touch during the private act
"The Men are Weeping in the Gym"
...they are wringing
their faces like sweat towels
in the sink their veins are about
to burst their banks they are flooding
out of themselves onto the tiles
"Strongman" in its entirety - a favorite of mine
my nephew asks if I can benchpress him
his mother’s new lover can and often does
my nephew who once said my boyfriend was illegal
my nephew with his dad’s voice and jaw
my nephew who now protests I had my hand
on his balls for the first attempt
I try again let both his wicket legs
rest against one palm put my other
to his heart and push because
what is masculinity if not taking the weight
of a boy and straining it from oneself?
here we are a man holding a boy above him
horizontal like an offering to the artex ceiling
not even a minor Greek would see as fit to sculpt
"The Schoolboys"
...first fluff ready for shaving
but left to go feral above the lip
words sweating into the air between them
the twelveyearold talk that finds the body
still comical rather than alluring
they briefly mention Thatcher and the town..."
This much good writing already and I'M ONLY ON PAGE 6 looking for quotes/lines!
I've got yellow little stickies coming off of most of the pages remaining.
I think I will post this review now, but continue to reread this entire book again immediately.
"Urination"
maybe it's that I dream of being bumped
knocked from my aim by a stranger
the briefest touch during the private act
"The Men are Weeping in the Gym"
...they are wringing
their faces like sweat towels
in the sink their veins are about
to burst their banks they are flooding
out of themselves onto the tiles
"Strongman" in its entirety - a favorite of mine
my nephew asks if I can benchpress him
his mother’s new lover can and often does
my nephew who once said my boyfriend was illegal
my nephew with his dad’s voice and jaw
my nephew who now protests I had my hand
on his balls for the first attempt
I try again let both his wicket legs
rest against one palm put my other
to his heart and push because
what is masculinity if not taking the weight
of a boy and straining it from oneself?
here we are a man holding a boy above him
horizontal like an offering to the artex ceiling
not even a minor Greek would see as fit to sculpt
"The Schoolboys"
...first fluff ready for shaving
but left to go feral above the lip
words sweating into the air between them
the twelveyearold talk that finds the body
still comical rather than alluring
they briefly mention Thatcher and the town..."
This much good writing already and I'M ONLY ON PAGE 6 looking for quotes/lines!
I've got yellow little stickies coming off of most of the pages remaining.
I think I will post this review now, but continue to reread this entire book again immediately.
November 26, 2015
I have always claimed to dislike poetry, not to understand poetry, to be afraid of poetry. I'm beginning to learn now.
November 4, 2018
Andrew McMillan’s Physical was nominated for the Forward Prize for Poetry and won The Guardian First Book Award, in November, 2015. It was a deserved win and one notable for a number of reasons. Physical placed poetry on The Guardian First Book Award list for the first time in 16 years. (A shocking reminder of how a powerful cultural force historically has become side-lined among readers...to the point that only two poets have ever made the shortlist). The accolade also acknowledged the talent of a gay writer whose themes are not immediately in touch with the lives of the many book-groups that took part in the judging process: a tribute to liberalism and fair-mindedness. (Curious, though, how the book groups felt the need to recognise the difference and remoteness in McMillan's gay life yet somehow felt close to a mythically inspired novel about a fishing expedition in Nigeria! Perhaps, that fact tells us something about reading habits and genres: when it comes to novels, readers actively seek fictional worlds beyond their own reality; when it comes to poetry they seek an endorsement of their own world). And finally, the win recognised a poetical voice that is Northern and rooted and mercifully free of dreaming spires and Englishness.
At the presentation in London, McMillan paid tribute to his editor at Cape, Robin Robertson, and that seems a sensible place to begin this review of Physical because so much of how poetry appears these days is down to the work of a poet and how that work is manipulated by publishing houses into its final form.
The introductory blurb by Cape promotes McMillan’s poetry as an “almost religious celebration of the flesh” in “colloquial Yorkshire rhythms with a sinewy Metaphysical music”. That “almost” is quite revealing, for it notes that this description isn’t McMillan’s work exactly; in fact, the tone of worship is about as close to religion as the semen stain that Gunn memorizes with such precision on “the toe of a boot” in “The Miracle” (The Passages of Joy, 1982). Each night it is polished and renewed like "a saint’s blood". It is unfortunate that, in England, when it comes to male-to-male sexual writing, we are unable to promote naked flesh without dressing it in spirituality. One of McMillan’s achievements is that he is able to love the flesh for what it is and write with candour…and wit. The Cape blurb has led some reviewers to hear the blurb rather than the actual poetry and talk of “hymns to the male body”, as if McMillan is Michelangelo addressing Cavalieri. (This is encouraged by the cover’s representative gay, naked male, which echoes the provocative design that Carcanet produced for Neil Powell’s True Colours, in 1991. Carcanet dared to go as far as a bare torso with open trousers and a hanging leather belt. Cape has gone as far as a crack-shot, de-capitated and de-membered, so as the viewer can add their own desires to the smooth, marbled, classical body. McMillan's honest poetry has nothing to do with the body-beautiful. But a beautiful butt sells better than normality). Seduced by this, Alison Flood has felt a “heavy scent of sensuality” in McMillan's work. Probably, only a female reviewer with no unfortunate knowledge of male toilets could describe a poem about male urinals as possessing a “scent”. The wit of McMillan is learnt more from the twisting debates of Gunn and his ability to transform a poem with a surprise conclusion is learnt from St. Thom rather than directly from Donne and Marvell. As with Gunn, there is a modern Elizabethanism and like the poet who paid homage to Hermes in Moly, McMillan is well-aware of the poetical trickster. He uses the flow of words (no punctuation) to create rich, Mannerist effects. What is most likeable about McMillan is his love of verbal tricks rather than the usual dull accounts of tricks picked up in gay bars. The “colloquial Yorkshire rhythms” are heard in the middle section of Physical, in the re-published pamphlet “protest of the physical”. And, maybe, they are heard too obviously, for comic effect:
drunk man to the drunker woman
where you from? Barnsley
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaarnslie
The northern voice is heard more effectively in the weighting of certain syllables and words, in a dryness and flatness of tone. The long poem “protest of the physical” has been compared to Howl and McMillan to Ginsberg. It isn’t comparable and he isn’t:
the men are weeping in the gym
using the hand dryer to cover
their sobs their hearts have grown too big
for their chests…
That could be Ginsberg’s Howl, but for the conscious irony and analytical mockery. There is surrealism in "The Men are Weeping in the Gym" that is closer to Liverpool, Patten and Henri, than Berkeley, California. Those northern readers who know Route Publishers, in Pontefract, and have read Howl for Now (2005) will not be fooled by such empty comparisons. (There is critical life outside the South). McMillan is McMillan and he possesses his own voice. In truth, “protest for the physical”, though important to McMillan, as it got him out of a writing-rut and into ploughing new fields;- isn’t the strongest work in Physical. The most memorable poems are those such as “Urination” and “Yoga” where there is direct communication with the reader and you listen to the voice in the words, on the page, and the shifts of humour and pathos and a sense of what comes out, not in poetry, but in the gay photography of Wolfgang Tillmans, where every little thing matters and homeliness and the commonplace exist alongside existence and uncertainty:
the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when they are older
and with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body…
I would rather read that, on a Sabbath, than go to Church! That is poetic communion. “Strongman” has wonderful humour and pathos and an ability to present complex ideas in clear images. “Finally” is a plangent lyric with a moving ending.
August 29, 2024
4.75⭐
What does it mean to have a body?
I think what makes this work by Andrew McMillan so wonderful is that, for a gay man, you can get so much from these readings at different points in your life. Anyone reading this will absolutely get some of the subtle nuances that McMillan depicts; but for queer men, there is so much to be said in these succinct lines that are presented. Mortality, sexuality, love, connection; these are some of the more prominent themes in this collection of works. Such a wonderful, quick work.
What does it mean to have a body?
I think what makes this work by Andrew McMillan so wonderful is that, for a gay man, you can get so much from these readings at different points in your life. Anyone reading this will absolutely get some of the subtle nuances that McMillan depicts; but for queer men, there is so much to be said in these succinct lines that are presented. Mortality, sexuality, love, connection; these are some of the more prominent themes in this collection of works. Such a wonderful, quick work.
December 23, 2023
Physical is a succinct and sparse collection of poetry that still holds the weight of something much more voluble. The verse is brief but full of layered meaning. Many of the lines work both alone and paired together in separate but synchronized ways. When you reach the end of one stunning line, McMillan then continues the thought in the next and the impact is suddenly doubled. He plays with form effortlessly and his writing is understated but rich with depth and insight.
The topics vary widely but it is all anchored by the broad theme of the physical body. McMillan explores queerness, domestic abuse, masculinity and grief. The cumulative effect is a poignant and moving supercut of the human condition. He reflects on past lovers with a wistful honesty that is never overly sentimental but always acutely authentic.
I will definitely be reading more of McMillan's poetry in the future. I really enjoyed his voice and perspective. Not every poem blew me away but that is rare even in the best poetry collections. I found that instead of working in that quotable, one-liner way that much of modern poetry seems to focus on, this book works best when taken as a whole. Each line informs the next and then that plays off of the next. The culmination of all this tangled thought is a tender reflection on loss, love and the shared trauma of being alive.
The topics vary widely but it is all anchored by the broad theme of the physical body. McMillan explores queerness, domestic abuse, masculinity and grief. The cumulative effect is a poignant and moving supercut of the human condition. He reflects on past lovers with a wistful honesty that is never overly sentimental but always acutely authentic.
I will definitely be reading more of McMillan's poetry in the future. I really enjoyed his voice and perspective. Not every poem blew me away but that is rare even in the best poetry collections. I found that instead of working in that quotable, one-liner way that much of modern poetry seems to focus on, this book works best when taken as a whole. Each line informs the next and then that plays off of the next. The culmination of all this tangled thought is a tender reflection on loss, love and the shared trauma of being alive.
January 23, 2022
Physical was the third gay collection I picked up after Siken’s Crush, during which there was a gap of six years between me realising there was gay poetry, and then having the means to actually access and purchase it. The collection has become especially well-thumbed over the years, and though I have reached for it to read about desire, I have begun to think that Physical is instead about the lack of, or perhaps the danger of desire.
What I’m saying is that the cover (a male nude) and its blurb with its mention of hymns to the male body is somewhat misleading. When I read McMillan’s poetry, I am struck by the way he writes into disillusionment with masculinity (“Strongman” and “Things Men Take”) and sex (“Screen” and “Not Quite”). It is against the constant measuring of the self and the ideal, of what we expect sex to be and what it ends up being, that McMillan’s poems makes the most sense.
In “Strongman”, McMillan uses a truism – “what is masculinity if not taking the weight // of a boy and straining it from oneself?” In many readings, I focused on the truism to exclusion of everything else. But now, I think that McMillan’s distrustful of this, perhaps even suspicious of the truism. As he writes in other poems, most explicitly in “Leda to Her Daughters”, masculinity enables violence by removing softness from its believers. This is why McMillan writes about the young with such tenderness and suspicion: he sees masculinity blooming within them.
The poem “Protest Against the Physical”, is tonally and emotionally different from other poems. McMillan has shared that he ended up with multiple fragments during the writing process, fragments he had to stitch together. This quilted-together poem feels a little loose, and isn’t always convincing, but there is a lightness and optimism peeping through that I enjoy (“there have been times I’ve woke and put my arm around / a pillow halfdreaming it was you”). It heralds the final section, one with kinder and more forgiving poems. I’ve always been drawn to McMillan’s voice, and I hope one day to pick up his third collection, pandemonium.
What I’m saying is that the cover (a male nude) and its blurb with its mention of hymns to the male body is somewhat misleading. When I read McMillan’s poetry, I am struck by the way he writes into disillusionment with masculinity (“Strongman” and “Things Men Take”) and sex (“Screen” and “Not Quite”). It is against the constant measuring of the self and the ideal, of what we expect sex to be and what it ends up being, that McMillan’s poems makes the most sense.
In “Strongman”, McMillan uses a truism – “what is masculinity if not taking the weight // of a boy and straining it from oneself?” In many readings, I focused on the truism to exclusion of everything else. But now, I think that McMillan’s distrustful of this, perhaps even suspicious of the truism. As he writes in other poems, most explicitly in “Leda to Her Daughters”, masculinity enables violence by removing softness from its believers. This is why McMillan writes about the young with such tenderness and suspicion: he sees masculinity blooming within them.
The poem “Protest Against the Physical”, is tonally and emotionally different from other poems. McMillan has shared that he ended up with multiple fragments during the writing process, fragments he had to stitch together. This quilted-together poem feels a little loose, and isn’t always convincing, but there is a lightness and optimism peeping through that I enjoy (“there have been times I’ve woke and put my arm around / a pillow halfdreaming it was you”). It heralds the final section, one with kinder and more forgiving poems. I’ve always been drawn to McMillan’s voice, and I hope one day to pick up his third collection, pandemonium.
September 17, 2017
A lovely collection, starting brilliantly ("The Men Are Weeping In The Gym", "Strongman", "Saturday Night"), with an assuredness of voice and perspective that I have not come across in a while. Being both a gay man and a little old-fashioned in my poetic taste, and I tend to read poems with an assumption that they will speak to me with a certain metaphorical remove. I can appreciate T.S. Eliot's description of urban professional drudgery in the city of London, for example, but it exists fundamentally at a hundred year distance to the London that I knew and used to commute through. It is glorious, and somewhat revelatory, to come across a volume of beautiful modern verse that describes a present homosexual world and perspective that I recognise so directly.
Thank you, Andrew McMillan.
The second section of the collection comprises one long poem, "protest of the physical", which did not agree with me quite so well. There's an old adage in art that you have to learn rules before you break them, and I have always found this to be especially true of free verse. Freed from the constraints of encapsulating an incisive thought in a page or two of verse, the poem sprawls, with more interest (to this reader, at least) in the form and rhythm of the thing, than in coherence. Breaks and caesura feel random, lines seem collected together because the stanzas are three lines long, rather than because they are a unit of thought or imagery. Because McMillan is undoubtedly talented, the whole is liberally sprinkled with beautifully crafted lines and vivid imagery, but it didn't hang together for me.
That said, the end pulls it back together. "How to Be a Man" describes an experience that almost exactly parallels one of my own, and speaks with an affecting simplicity through a form that - less ably deployed - would have felt agonisingly pretentious. The last poem, "Finally", is a beautifully concise elegy to heartbreak, and contains some of McMillan's best work.
Thank you, Andrew McMillan.
The second section of the collection comprises one long poem, "protest of the physical", which did not agree with me quite so well. There's an old adage in art that you have to learn rules before you break them, and I have always found this to be especially true of free verse. Freed from the constraints of encapsulating an incisive thought in a page or two of verse, the poem sprawls, with more interest (to this reader, at least) in the form and rhythm of the thing, than in coherence. Breaks and caesura feel random, lines seem collected together because the stanzas are three lines long, rather than because they are a unit of thought or imagery. Because McMillan is undoubtedly talented, the whole is liberally sprinkled with beautifully crafted lines and vivid imagery, but it didn't hang together for me.
That said, the end pulls it back together. "How to Be a Man" describes an experience that almost exactly parallels one of my own, and speaks with an affecting simplicity through a form that - less ably deployed - would have felt agonisingly pretentious. The last poem, "Finally", is a beautifully concise elegy to heartbreak, and contains some of McMillan's best work.
that the scent of him has lifted
from the last of the sheets
that he isn't coming back
that it hasn't rained
but the birds are pretending that it has
so they can sing
April 9, 2017
I've never ready poetry like this. Beautiful and unique collection about relationships between men. Favorite poem is "Choke." I also really enjoyed "Protest of the Physical." This was my second book of poetry for this year's National Poetry Month.
January 19, 2021
Had some cool lines tho
Read
December 17, 2022ever-fresh and delicate and everything you'd look for in a lightbeam of a debut. Each poem too delivers a colour in itself I'm looking at The Schoolboys, Strongman, Yoga - none of which are the strongest Poem in here but are so essential to the texture of the collection. It's exquisite and there's no denying that. Also I love the love for a figure like Thom Gunn who's critically underread these days and the second half of this collection veers into a rather different unGunny direction but it makes me happy to see him talked about.
Perhaps it's just me and I've been scrambled lately but I've been thinking plenty on the inner dynamos and it may be the most exciting thing about this collection is what Andrew can do metrically. Before I'm carted away for my nonsense it's something that I do suspect is the tectonics of this - the masterwork. It would be a great debut without this but I think it's something in there that elevates AM into a new mainstay. He slips into IP as naturally as the well experienced do. but I had to write a long footnote on the metrical shiverings of one line in Yoga. I'm thinking also of screen where we have
rhythm to know if we could work I knew
that you would end up loving me too
much I thought you needed other idols
(this doesn't match Andrew's spacing within the lines that's goodreads' fault).
beyond the painfully brilliant break in "loving me too /much" (which I have described as "producing a burning fork". ok on one CB). but look look at how that could only work with his metrical pull, his leading to both break and reconciliation. anyway look at the yoga line. functional? or fundamental, flowering
until the heft begins to shake the legs and the architecture
Perhaps it's just me and I've been scrambled lately but I've been thinking plenty on the inner dynamos and it may be the most exciting thing about this collection is what Andrew can do metrically. Before I'm carted away for my nonsense it's something that I do suspect is the tectonics of this - the masterwork. It would be a great debut without this but I think it's something in there that elevates AM into a new mainstay. He slips into IP as naturally as the well experienced do. but I had to write a long footnote on the metrical shiverings of one line in Yoga. I'm thinking also of screen where we have
rhythm to know if we could work I knew
that you would end up loving me too
much I thought you needed other idols
(this doesn't match Andrew's spacing within the lines that's goodreads' fault).
beyond the painfully brilliant break in "loving me too /much" (which I have described as "producing a burning fork". ok on one CB). but look look at how that could only work with his metrical pull, his leading to both break and reconciliation. anyway look at the yoga line. functional? or fundamental, flowering
until the heft begins to shake the legs and the architecture
February 16, 2016
I loved all of this, and will keep re-reading. If I had to choose, then I would say I like the third section the most, (and found the middle section the hardest - although that might make it the best - the one I'll need to go back to, to keep getting more from it), and the final poem, Finally, the best.
January 23, 2024
Stunning, incredibly honest and accurately emotional. His poetry is accessible while remaining thoughtful and elevated. I’ve been coming back to this collection since first reading it six months ago. This likely will become a defining, influential book in my life. My favourites are in the first third, providing me with a new lens to understand human interaction and physicality.
Read
July 19, 2025"i had forgotten that loving could feel so calming"
December 9, 2021
An enormously strong first section, however the momentum doesn’t carry so much by the end
May 30, 2016
I'm not one to read a whole tonne of poetry, maybe it's still a long drawn out hangover from school, maybe we'll never know. But am I glad I read Andrew McMillan's collection "Physical". I came across this work as it won the Guardian's First Book Award this year, and yesterday thought, why not?
This collection is a beautiful selection of poems, and almost anecdotes, about love, physicality, intimacy, and death. All the poems here find themselves dealing, rather graphically in places, with the body in many ways, about memory of bodies, memory of intimacy past and present. It works the whole way through without any full stops or commas, it flows, it feels like it is diving out of the author's head to the page - location and time always feel fluid. This lack of punctuation actually brought together one of my favourite elements of the collection, the staggering about of double-meaning and structural-hangovers, words and phrases that could belong to two different thoughts or sentences. I feel like I will have to read this again at one point because the meaning appears so often and then I found myself back tracking half a line or so to see what worked and where McMillan's mind was going.
With that in mind, I would still say this was a very accessible collection of poetry. And even as it uses the word "porn" a number of times and even offers it's legitmacy as a topic for discussion at one point, this collection does not deal in porn, it deals in the physical, human physicality, everyday physicality - and for that it is tender and genuine and well meaning.
A lovely quick read.
This collection is a beautiful selection of poems, and almost anecdotes, about love, physicality, intimacy, and death. All the poems here find themselves dealing, rather graphically in places, with the body in many ways, about memory of bodies, memory of intimacy past and present. It works the whole way through without any full stops or commas, it flows, it feels like it is diving out of the author's head to the page - location and time always feel fluid. This lack of punctuation actually brought together one of my favourite elements of the collection, the staggering about of double-meaning and structural-hangovers, words and phrases that could belong to two different thoughts or sentences. I feel like I will have to read this again at one point because the meaning appears so often and then I found myself back tracking half a line or so to see what worked and where McMillan's mind was going.
With that in mind, I would still say this was a very accessible collection of poetry. And even as it uses the word "porn" a number of times and even offers it's legitmacy as a topic for discussion at one point, this collection does not deal in porn, it deals in the physical, human physicality, everyday physicality - and for that it is tender and genuine and well meaning.
A lovely quick read.
April 20, 2022
Jacob With the Angel
taken literally it just happens the way the weather
or the stock market happens
tangling into the unpierced flesh of one another
grappling with the shifting question of each other’s bodies
until the morning breaks across them and still their strength
no soft parts of stomachs no inch of them hung loose
like old sacking from the muscle
and burning afterwards or barely able to walk afterwards
or not giving a name because names would add history
and the tasting of the flesh and blood of someone
is something out of time
taken allegorically he is beating on himself
until the point at which the inner river of the word grace
runs past and everything lays down in calm
and walking back across the stream to his possessions
he feels the bruise that is staining his thigh
and he wonders at the strength of one so smooth
and his wives and womenservants and his sons
are sat waiting for the story
but he sleeps without speaking and on waking
isn’t sure if he has dreamt it
but his youngest notices the thresh marks of wingbeats
on his back and he asks for ink to be brought
he says writing something down keeps it alive
McMillan is king.
Frescoes exposing masculinity as vulnerability, as strength. No one does it better than him.
taken literally it just happens the way the weather
or the stock market happens
tangling into the unpierced flesh of one another
grappling with the shifting question of each other’s bodies
until the morning breaks across them and still their strength
no soft parts of stomachs no inch of them hung loose
like old sacking from the muscle
and burning afterwards or barely able to walk afterwards
or not giving a name because names would add history
and the tasting of the flesh and blood of someone
is something out of time
taken allegorically he is beating on himself
until the point at which the inner river of the word grace
runs past and everything lays down in calm
and walking back across the stream to his possessions
he feels the bruise that is staining his thigh
and he wonders at the strength of one so smooth
and his wives and womenservants and his sons
are sat waiting for the story
but he sleeps without speaking and on waking
isn’t sure if he has dreamt it
but his youngest notices the thresh marks of wingbeats
on his back and he asks for ink to be brought
he says writing something down keeps it alive
McMillan is king.
Frescoes exposing masculinity as vulnerability, as strength. No one does it better than him.
July 17, 2016
Fantastic debut, read all of the poems twice. McMillan writes about physical love, always between men, the body, relationships remembered, navigating loss, etc. The pauses feel like breaths, which connected me as reader to the poem, adding to the physicality.
The poems are in three sections, the second being all one poem called "protest of the physical" which seems to be dedicated to a former lover.
Favorites from the first section, "physical":
-Yoga
"...having no judgement of what the body
may want to be doing where the breath may fail"
(listen to the poet reading it on SoundCloud)
-Choke
"...I learnt the pleasure in possessing
capacities that are never
quite fulfilled...."
-Not Quite
Favorites from the third section, "degradation":
-How to Be a Man
"...you thought men simply carried on
when your dad unfolded in front of you
nobody had taught you how to fix him back together"
-Revelations
"...they were the books through which you filled the gaps
that leaving left the books that were full of their stories
which is your story
which is always the story of a man who left
and the one who must await his return"
-A Gift
"...we were young we only had our bodies"
The poems are in three sections, the second being all one poem called "protest of the physical" which seems to be dedicated to a former lover.
Favorites from the first section, "physical":
-Yoga
"...having no judgement of what the body
may want to be doing where the breath may fail"
(listen to the poet reading it on SoundCloud)
-Choke
"...I learnt the pleasure in possessing
capacities that are never
quite fulfilled...."
-Not Quite
Favorites from the third section, "degradation":
-How to Be a Man
"...you thought men simply carried on
when your dad unfolded in front of you
nobody had taught you how to fix him back together"
-Revelations
"...they were the books through which you filled the gaps
that leaving left the books that were full of their stories
which is your story
which is always the story of a man who left
and the one who must await his return"
-A Gift
"...we were young we only had our bodies"
December 28, 2017
I didn't want it to end.
I definitely recalled the middle of my first ten years of dating with this collection. Clarity and resolution even in the poems about getting through the thick of loneliness or post-breakup shenanigans.
More.
I definitely recalled the middle of my first ten years of dating with this collection. Clarity and resolution even in the poems about getting through the thick of loneliness or post-breakup shenanigans.
More.
June 12, 2024
(reread) lol younger me being an idiot this is fuckin great, very stirring xx
(first read) Some beautiful observations on masculinity and the way in which the male body moves within queer spaces. A thoroughly enjoyable, although not an world-shattering read.
(first read) Some beautiful observations on masculinity and the way in which the male body moves within queer spaces. A thoroughly enjoyable, although not an world-shattering read.
January 16, 2017
Raw, gentle, yet explosive. A sensitive insight to male body and male love. The awards and nominations were given for a reason. Will be among the best books I've read this year, I'm sure.
June 15, 2019
breath-taking existential-erotic poems
March 16, 2024
i love you, piss poem
November 17, 2018
I’d read great things about this debut collection and having indulged over a couple of days, I feel as if I have been privy to McMillan’s personal live. This, I think, is the intention. It’s a gritty, heartfelt collection; having said this, there are subtleties that require careful inference. There are multiple interpretations, too, which is what poetry encourages. It’s the subjective nature of the form that is so beautiful although, in Physical, it’s often clear that McMillan is writing about his own experiences, not just as a gay man but as someone living life (and all of its intricacies) that we are experience.
This collection is different to a lot of other poetry I have read. McMillan eschews regular punctuation throughout - if you like, it’s part of the poet’s style, his raisin d’etre, perhaps, where his writing is concerned. ‘I.M’ made me stop and think more than any of the other poems - probably due to the revelation of terrible loss suffered by a man. Following this, ‘... badger...’ had a similar effect but in a different way. The final poem - ‘Finally’ - leaves a desolate feeling and the image of birds singing, and ‘pretending’, is perhaps something we all think about: how can the everyday continue when something personal and hard-hitting has affected an individual?
‘Physical’ is a thought-provoking collection, one that feels alive and real. Read it and see for yourself.
This collection is different to a lot of other poetry I have read. McMillan eschews regular punctuation throughout - if you like, it’s part of the poet’s style, his raisin d’etre, perhaps, where his writing is concerned. ‘I.M’ made me stop and think more than any of the other poems - probably due to the revelation of terrible loss suffered by a man. Following this, ‘... badger...’ had a similar effect but in a different way. The final poem - ‘Finally’ - leaves a desolate feeling and the image of birds singing, and ‘pretending’, is perhaps something we all think about: how can the everyday continue when something personal and hard-hitting has affected an individual?
‘Physical’ is a thought-provoking collection, one that feels alive and real. Read it and see for yourself.
April 22, 2024
I was blown away by this prose and poetry, it explores what it means to be a gay man in a heterosexual damaged society. I can’t think of any other poet who could make a poem about a trip to the urinals into a serio-comic hymn to intimacy that actually works, let alone close it with a confessional scene of sensual immediacy that moves and shocks.
Favorite as always:
“the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when they are older
and with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside”
Favorite as always:
“the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when they are older
and with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside”
May 9, 2022
Private, visceral, potent, and magnificent in its disclosure of human frailties. Its affectionate and sensual praise of the male body and homosexual love is suggestive, and fairly cogent. Here are a few lines that in their tender eroticism and simplicity and realness struck me. ‘After your hand had been on my throat / I learnt the pleasure in possessing / capacities that are never / quite fulfilled almost being broken.’ Pretty.
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