Photograph: Martin Godwin
I would like to be able to say that I am a fan of poetry - I am more or less, but I must admit that I would happily apply twelve points to many poetic licenses. I'm much more of a proser or song lyricist than a man of rhyme and reason. Although Auden, Larkin, Betjeman, Cooper Clarke and Jock Scot have all tickled my taste buds, none have come close to my recent discovery - I am Cherry Alive, by Delmore Schwartz.
Most people of my jib at least (forgive my ignorance please, scholars) will know Schwartz as the sculptor of Lou Reed. He was the poetry professor at Syracuse University in the early 1960s and the man credited for turning Mr Reed from a great lyricist into the best observer of certain things that not everybody actually wants to see, of all time. You can almost smell the bored, distressed tweed, pipe smoke, booze fumes and leather arm patches, as Nipper Reed scuttles round him like an excited puppy dog waiting to have his belly tickled for a clever rhyme.
As a post pubescent punk, then Lou Reed fan (due to man next door playing me Transformer after I assured him that Sid Vicious had invented punk rock, and all forms of teen rebellion), then Velvet Underground fan, I did my research, and came across the "special stuff" hidden for initiates on the bookshelves. Amazingly (now), Wokingham Library had books on the Beat Generation, New York's dark underbelly, the narcotic rantings of William Burroughs, Ginsburg, Kerouac, Gregory Corso and Charles Bukowski, which I read - all thanks to Lou Reed I have to say. It destroyed my education completely.
Anyway, the point is that while driving along the A40 recently, and listening to Radio 4 (before stinging nettle and mugwort-alive children nicked my radio), they read out Delmore Schwartz's poem I am Cherry Alive. I at last understood what it was that gets poets into the bedchambers of exquisite beauties - and quite rightly so (it opened up a whole new world of potential mischief for me, I can tell you: blue/true....very richladywhosehusband's just left you?)
If you've got children, or if you've ever witnessed them at play (really playing, letting their imaginations rule), I am Cherry Alive is the most God-beautiful affirmation of life - the best collection of words ever put together. Life with new tastes, colours and mischiefs all encapsulated. Whizzbangs, laughter, fizzyness - a little girl whose brightness and naughtiness means business. It's authentic. I've got a five year old girl who's Cherry Alive so I can prove it. She called me a "blithering incompetent pigeon" the other day.
I don't know whether this was Lou Reed's favourite Schwartz poem, but as far as I can see, the man who could write this was capable of anything.
