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Simon Armitage (Poet of The Manhunt)

The Manhunt (poem)

The Manhunt is a poem written by the English poet Simon Armitage. It is written about a man who returns from the war and suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the consequences this disorder took on his relationship with his wife. The poem was written in 2007 and was widely based on the sufferings of a soldier who fought in the Bosnian war in the 1990s and his wife.

Poem

After the first phase,
after passionate nights and intimate days,
only then would he let me trace
the frozen river which ran through his face,
only then would he let me explore
the blown hinge of his lower jaw,
and handle and hold
the damaged, porcelain collar-bone,
and mind and attend
the fractured rudder of shoulder-blade,
and finger and thumb
the parachute silk of his punctured lung.
Only then could I bind the struts
and climb the rungs of his broken ribs,
and feel the hurt
of his grazed heart.
Skirting along,
only then could I picture the scan,
the foetus of metal beneath his chest
where the bullet had finally come to rest.
Then I widened the search,
traced the scarring back to its source
to a sweating, unexploded mine
buried deep in his mind, around which
every nerve in his body had tightened and closed.
Then, and only then, did I come close.

Summary

The poem is written in the perspective of the soldier's wife Laura and how she feels watching her husband struggle over the thoughts of the war. The poem is written in rhyming couplets with two lines per stanza. In each stanza, Armitage uses descriptive language to create concrete imagery, however in the second line looks at the psychological impacts the war had. This idea is touched upon by Genius Lyrics' close analysis of the poem. The Manhunt (poem) successfully represents the feelings that both Eddie (the soldier) and Laura (the wife/narrator) are both battling and how it is not only affecting themselves but their relationship with one another. Armitage wrote this poem as a way of representing the physical and psychological impacts that war can inflict on the soldiers involved and their families around them.

Dedication

Armitage wrote the poem in dedication to a couple who have been severely impacted by war. The poem can sometimes be titled as The Manhunt (Laura's poem). This is because the poem is written in the perspective of Laura, the wife, and how she is perceiving Eddie and his actions and feelings after returning home from war. In an interview with the BBC, Armitage speaks about how he is not a soldier nor has he ever been in a war, and that his aim was to reach out to those who have suffered and what their feelings were. The idea of this poem is for soldiers and their families to realise that they are not alone. Although the poem is specifically dedicated to Eddie and Laura and how their marriage has been heavily impacted by this war, the poem could also be dedicated to every soldier who has fought in a war and been severely injured or impacted by what they have seen and the impact this trauma has also had on their families.

Title

The title of this poem is an integral part of the poem as a whole. Laura is the narrator of the poem and takes the reader on a journey with her as she tries to rediscover her husband again after he has returned home from war. Although the title may be considered as misleading and give the idea of some kind of police investigation, this is not the premise of the poem. Due to Eddie's trauma, Laura finds that he is not the same man she knew before he went to war and sets off to find her husband again, hence she is on a manhunt for her husband. Throughout each stanza we see Laura growing closer towards Eddie again.

Themes

• War
• Conflict
• Love and Relationships
• Grief
• Trauma

Analysis of the Poem

The poem takes on a two line stanza structure throughout the entirety of the poem and uses rhyming couplets in each stanza. Within the poem we see Laura gradually grow closer and closer towards Eddie again and how this happens over time. At the beginning of the poem we see Laura state that the couple shared "Passionate nights and intimate days" and that this was simply the first phase, which could suggest that Eddie's trauma got worse as time passed of him being back from war. However, in each stanza Laura explains a feature about Eddie which she has managed to rediscover within him. Armitage stated that he used a lot of military language which makes sense considering the main theme of the poem is war and conflict. The use of adjectival phrases such as "blown hinge", "punctured lung", and "grazed heart" allow the reader to really imagine the injuries that Eddie received during the war and how he must feel about the whole situation. The poem helps the reader to feel sympathy towards both Eddie and Laura, however as the poem is in her perspective, the reader feels more sympathetic towards Laura as they hear first hand how much she is actually struggling to cope with it all and the distance Eddie has placed on them. The poem also uses the phrase "porcelain collar-bone" which shows the fragility of Eddie but could potentially be reflecting back on the fragile nature of Eddie and Laura's relationship. Throughout the poem we see Eddie slowly let Laura get close to him again. However at the end of the poem, the line "Then, and only then, did I come close" shows that Laura still has not been fully let back in by Eddie and that this 'manhunt' is still partially ongoing and they are not in fact back to how they were before. Armitage may have subtly done this in order to show the reader that the couple will never actually get back to that place as Eddie will never be able to forget the traumatic events he saw and felt during his time in the war.

Literary Techniques

• Rhyming Couplet
• Repetition -

  "only then"

• Metaphor -

  "frozen river which ran through his face"

  "parachute silk of his punctured lung"

• Enjambment -

  throughout the whole poem.