Romantic Intimacy: Alan Gillis And Vona Groarke

Author, Alain de Botton once said, “Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them” (Intimacy). Relationships are founded on an understanding and connection found between two people. Intimacy is often treated as a should be hidden away aspect of relationships. Alan Gillis and Vona Groarke use their poetry to tell the struggles and triumphs of everyday relationships. Both of them do not shy away from portraying the natural and mundane acts that occur in life such as describing the romance and intimacy between people. However, both of them choose to portray romantic intimacy in their own way. In their poetry, Alan Gillis portrays romantic intimacy directly and Vona Groarke depicts romantic intimacy

indirectly.
Romantic Intimacy is a crucial aspect of Alan Gillis and Vona Groarke’s poetry as they depict the everyday romance of the speakers of their poems. In portraying these relationships, Gillis shows how intimacy can be shown in everyday life, rather than an aspect concept. His use of imagery, especially when describing the intimacy between two individuals makes the images feel authentic and believable in telling of these romantically intimate situations. As seen in “Among the Barley,” Gillis uses physical description to show the sexual and physicality of the speaker and his or her partner’s relationship: “And when she bared her chamomile thighs, / her red-toed sunblaze, my body became/ barely fields on fire” (Among the barley 23). In these lines, he uses the description of the body of both the speaker and his or her partner in describing the speaker’s physical reaction to his or her partner’s body. While he does not censor the topic of his poem, he does use the imagery of the household places to connect the intimacy to each part of the relationship’s life. Looking at the relationship in the poem, “Among the barley,” Gillis uses dualities to compare the different sides of their relationship. In “Among the Barley,” he wrote, “So let our love be watertight and let the breeze blow through it…let us be truth, let us be dare…” (Among the barley 25). Relationships have their mountains to climb and the smooth roads. Gillis acknowledges these variants in his poem, and in doing so, he shows the romance of the relationship in a direct light.
In his poetry, Gillis does not portray an unrealistic example of love, but rather shows how love can exist in a typical relationship in a direct portrayal. Although not directly speaking of Gillis’s poems primarily focused upon in this essay, Cronin wrote in his review, discussing how Gillis describes romance in two of his poems, “When Gillis takes on themes of affection or deep feeling in poems like 'Niamh' and 'Purgatory' , there is almost invariably an edge to it as if the consoling communions of desire were always subject to the disruptive pessimism of envy, jealousy, malice and uncertainty” (Cronin 112). Despite showing intimacy in his poem, he also shows the darker sides of relationships. Gillis’s “Among of the Barley” does not glorify the relationship of the speaker of the poem and his or her partner. Throughout the entire poem, he depicts the romance and intimacy in a humane tone such as discussing when they were to make love, “we meant to make love on the stairs,/ the deskchair, the windowstill…” (Among the barley 25). In using explicit details of the intimacy his poetry, he depicts direct intimacy in “Among the Barley”.
Not only has Gillis displayed intimacy directly in “Among the Barley,” Gillis does this as well in his poem, “In Whose Blent Air All Our Compulsions meet”.

As discussed in Quinn’s review the poem, "In Whose Blent Air All Our Compulsions meet," Quinn notes the lyrically sound of the verses that resemble old traditional English: “in a sequence like 'In Whose Blent Air All Our Compulsions Meet', one encounters lines that sound like echoes of an older lyric tradition in English verse” (Quinn 138). In having such a lyrical sound in his poetry, Gillis's language echoes the old writers of English Poetry and gives a classical feel to his poem while still allowing the portrayal of direct intimacy in his poetry. That kind of classical connects the transition of having elegant language while speaking of intimacy in a very plain style. In that combination of language and topic, readers are able to see this elegance in the writing of this love, while also, seeing the everyday life depiction in his poetry. Quinn notes in his article, “The marvel of the poem is the original combination of registers to write about the most unoriginal of subjects, lovers out for a walk on a country lane. Slowness and speed, huckster patter and ancient lyric sweetness — Gillis wants all the old pleasures of poetry, along with the shock of slang that seems almost ahead of the curve” (Quinn 138). This poem uses an infamous image of two people in love going on a walk, but uses current slang and language to add a

different interpretation of the cliché to this romantic scene. In doing this, he allows the image to turn into a faster paced scene, found more currently in the present day. By adding in this slang, he adds small shifts to the old style language the poem in written in and adds flair to the poem's images, especially in displaying scenes that imply or show intimacy in his poetry. Gillis does not shy away from depicting an image of this couple in bed when he writes, “Going for a pop song, going to pot/ in a Homebase bed of jasmine and bergamot:/ when you reach over, and your shadow spews/ over my bent of mind, I want to do with you” (In whose bent air p.63). By his stunning use of language in his poetry, he is able to make an unique style to his poetry that captures the direct romantic intimacy of everyday life.
In looking at Alan Gillis’s poetry, Justin Quinn describes Gillis's writing, “The reader's exhilaration comes from the quick succession of surprising, humorous and sometimes outrageous imagery” (Quinn 138).

While the Quinn was not specifically talking directly about “Among the Barley”, this description used does represent Gillis's typical work of humor and imagery that supports his use of those in describing the romantic intimacy in the poem. By describing this couple in the way that he does, Gillis is able to normalize acts of romantic intimacy in his poetry: “then you reach over, your eyes pursed and finite,/ and blow out the candle. Here comes the night” (In whose bent air p.63). Before this last line, the couple is shown lying in the bed together, and with this darkness that encloses them after she blows out the candle, hints at the intimacy that possible could follow this poem. This line shows the closeness of this couple and the intimate love the openly share within the poem. While looking at the relationships found in “In whose bent air,” Gillis’s lines in this poem shows the relationship as a very natural one and united one: “Put your clothes on, she said, you’re not dead/ yet and we must take the air, and so on./ Yah de yah de yah. And so, we take the air” (In whose bent air p. 60). These lines depict the togetherness that these two feel as they are initially together when she tells the speaker to put their clothes on again and reminds them that they are alive.

Gillis wrote how the two must take the air, and therefore, they take it, highlighting the fact that these two are united in doing this. Such as in “Among the barley,” where the couple had meant to make love in a numerous of places and their relationship had fallen apart, Cronin’s description of how Gillis uses both sides of intimate relationships accurately depicts how Gillis enforces that no relatinships is perfect and each have their own flaws, showing that kind of intimacy in a humanized setting. “dreaming a sentence in the cells of love” (In whose bent air p. 65). In not hiding the darker sides of romance, the “cells of love” deals with entrapment possibly felt by one or both of the lovers in this poem.
Unlike in Gillis’s two poems, Vona Groarke approaches depicting intimacy indirectly throughout her poems, “Intimacy” and “X”. Groarke’s details enhance the imagery found in her poetry, creating a closer read for her readers. In describing her use of houses and detail in her fourth collection, Juniper Street, Johnston wrote in his review, “This is typical of Groarke's meticulous attention to detail, to formal arrangement in her well-wrought poems, here extending