-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Introduction
-
This poem is part of a longer sequence collectively known as "Out of the Blue" by the British poet Simon Armitage, written to commemorate the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The poem is spoken in the voice of a man trapped in the North Tower of the World Trade Center after the first plane has hit but before the building's collapse. As the man desperately waves a white shirt in a plea for help, the poem illustrates the pain of losing hope as well as the terror, confusion, and despair of confronting death. The poem was inspired by real-life footage of 9/11, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Summary
-
The speaker, a man trapped in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, speaks directly to the reader/an onlooker filming him, declaring that "you" have noticed him. In distant footage of the burning building, you've just spotted a billowing white shirt.
The truth is that the speaker is waving that shirt over and over again. He's so high up that he's just a speck in the clouds, but he's still waving and waving. He wonders if anyone watching can see a human being worthy of rescue.
He wonders when you will come to save hime, and if you think you're just looking at a man shaking away some crumbs or hanging up his laundry rather than signaling for help.
He's trying his best. The brutal heat of the fire behind him is pushing him forward, but he's not ready to wave the white flag of surrender. He's not yet hopeless enough to jump.
A bird flies past the man. The ground is horrifically far below. It's horrific that others like him are plummeting through the air, their bodies spinning wildly as they fall.
He wonders if your eyes can even believe what they're seeing: that he's still up there in the tower, and still alive.
But he's starting to get increasingly tired. The sounds of ambulances and fire trucks ring out from the ground. He's lost feeling in his arm and is losing his willpower. He asks a loved one directly if they can see him. He is giving up, surrendering.
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Themes
-
Terror, Despair, and Loss of Hope
Armitage's poem, part of a longer sequence titled "Out of the Blue," imagines the desperate final moments of a man trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (the poem is based on actual footage from the day). The poem traces the man's loss of hope and control as the tragic reality of his situation sets in and his death becomes ever more inevitable. Facing death, the poem illustrates, is terrifying and overwhelming.
At first, the speaker tries to get the reader's—or anyone's—attention, hoping that his life can still be saved. The man waves a white cotton shirt, "twirling [and] turning" it in a desperate attempt to get help. He understands that he's hard to see—a part of a "distant shot of a building burning" and "small in the clouds." He also observes other people leaping or falling out of the tower, calling the sight of their "wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling" bodies "appalling"—utterly shocking and horrific.
Still, the speaker is "trying and trying" to get someone to rescue him, insisting that his white shirt is not "the white [flag] of surrender" and seeming confused as to why no one has yet "come" to help. The "depth" below him is sickening, and he can't yet imagine "diving" off the building as others have done. His refusal to give in conveys his intense desire to survive, but it also reflects the difficulty of confronting the terrible truth of his situation: that he has no control, and that rescue is impossible.
Eventually, though, terrible reality sets in. He can wave as much as he wants, but there's nothing anyone can do to help him. The "[s]irens" of ambulances and fire trucks are too far "below," unable to reach him; he's so high up that a bird flies past. The speaker's arm goes "numb" from all the waving, and his hope gives way to despair as he wonders whether anyone is even aware that he's still alive. He then asks, "Do you see me, my love." That this question ends with a full stop, rather than a question mark, conveys the man's utter despair and hopelessness, as though he knows full well the answer: no one can identify him, and he can't even say goodbye to those he loves.
The speaker's last word, "flagging," acknowledges that he's given in: the shirt which he waved in a desperate plea to get help now does become a symbol of surrender. He has no control over anything except when to jump.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-28
-
Catastrophe and Insignificance
In addition to illustrating the terror of death, the human desire to survive, and the pain of losing hope, Armitage's poem also conveys the immense horror of 9/11 itself. Zooming in on a single man makes the tragedy personal and visceral, yet the poem also makes clear that this man is just one of many who lost their lives that day. The poem highlights the overwhelming, almost unfathomable chaos and horror of the terrorist attack, in turn juxtaposing humanity's capacity for destruction with the smallness and fragility of individual human life.
The speaker, who is the poem's lone voice, desperately waves his shirt to get help. For him, it doesn't matter that he's part of a major event in human history: he just wants to live. Other moments in the poem emphasize his individual perspective, such as his observation of a bird flying past as if nothing is happening, or his pained cry in the last line: "Do you see me, my love." This reminds the reader that the man was a real person with his own life and loved ones; he's not just a symbol of the day's horror.
But the man also knows he's hard to see and appreciates the scale of what's happening. The catastrophe is far bigger than him, and he is just one of the thousands in the same or similar horrific predicaments. The images of him relentlessly waving shirt, growing tired, and hoping someone will save him illustrate just how small he is compared to this event. He seems hopelessly fragile against the backdrop of flames and smoke; he's stuck up there with the birds, and there's nothing the "sirens"—that is, the emergency services—can do from ground level. Nothing can save him, and the "wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling" people all around him suggest it's a question of when death will come, not if. Just as his energy levels drop, he effectively disappears into the sheer magnitude of the event. His final moments take on symbolic power as an image representative of the wider horror, but as an actual individual—with a name and a personality and a life—he dissolves into the background.
Adding to the poem's sense of tragedy is the fact that, in real life, the people seen waving and falling from the Twin Towers before they collapsed were never identified. When this man asks if his "love" can see him, no one really can—other than as a grainy figure in footage shot from far away. The awful truth is not just that he dies, but that he dies alone—far from his "love," rendered anonymous by the immense chaos that surrounds him.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-28
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Out of the Blue (Excerpt)”
-
Lines 1-4
You have picked ...
... is twirling, turning.The poem takes place on 9/11. According to the poet, the speaker is an English trader stuck in the World Trade Center's North Tower after the first plane struck but before the tower's collapse. The poem was inspired by actual footage: Armitage has described the image of a bystander pointing a video camera up at a person trapped in the burning building and waving a white object.
The speaker addresses "You" throughout the poem. The identity of this "you" is never made clear within the poem itself, allowing that "you" to stand for any or all of the following: the person recording this footage, and, later, the viewers of that footage; the reader; the man's loved ones; the general public on 9/11; and humanity in a broader sense. Part of the poem's power is that the speaker doesn't really have a true destination for his words; no one can actually hear him, and he is going to die.
The reader knows this, creating dramatic irony and granting the whole poem a sense of inevitability and futility from beginning to end. These are the imagined thoughts of an anonymous, doomed man, spoken as if in real-time during the event and, in a way, after the fact. Here, he is both living and a ghost.
In the opening line, the speaker says, "You have picked me out." The speaker then describes his situation from the perspective of the camera/that "you." He forms part of a "distant shot of a building burning," that bold /b/ alliteration calling attention to the horror of the poem's setting.
The speaker then says "you have noticed now," that "now" implying that it takes a beat for whoever is looking at this "shot" to spot him. Really, they just spot the "white cotton shirt" that's "twirling, turning" in the distance; it's not clear yet whether or not actually see the speaker himself.
This stanza, like the rest of the poem, is chock-full of "-ing" verbs, or present participles. The building is "burning"; the white shirt "is twirling, turning." These words make the poem sound urgent and immediate. They wrench the poem uncomfortably into the present moment, forcing the reader to try to imagine what it was like to be in the speaker's shoes. The poem's immediacy rehumanizes the speaker, reminding the reader that he isn't just a symbol of the day's horror; ultimately, there is a real person behind the poem, even if these words are imagined. The asyndeton in this stanza and throughout the poem adds to the building sense of confusion and panic; there's no time for an "and" in "twirling, turning."
The poem uses quatrains (four-line stanzas), with every second and fourth line ending in an "-ing" verb and often with a full rhyme to boot (e.g., "burning"/"turning" in this stanza). This set-up makes the speaker seem at once frantic and frozen: he's also stuck on a particular sound just as he's stuck in a particular part of the building. He's moving, relentlessly waving that shirt, but firmly in place.
-
Lines 5-8
In fact I ...
... soul worth saving?
Unlock all 344 words of this analysis of Lines 5-8 of “Out of the Blue (Excerpt),” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Lines 9-12
So when will ...
... pegging out washing? -
Lines 13-16
I am trying ...
... of leaving, diving. -
Lines 17-20
A bird goes ...
... wheeling, spiralling, falling. -
Lines 21-24
Are your eyes ...
... am still breathing. -
Lines 25-28
But tiring, tiring. ...
... am failing, flagging.
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Symbols
-
The White Shirt
In a desperate bid to get help, the speaker waves his white shirt out of the window. He insists that this is not "the white of surrender," a nod to the fact that, traditionally, waving a white flag is a way of signaling that you've given up. For example, a depleted army might fly a white flag on the battlefield to admit defeat. The speaker expressly denies this symbolism at first, saying that the shirt doesn't represent his giving up but rather his refusal to give in, his (ultimately futile) hope that he can still be saved.
That changes in the poem's final moment, when the speaker says, "I am failing, flagging." The speaker ends with a pun that alludes to the aforementioned military symbolism. The white shirt, in the end, does turn into a kind of white flag—a sign of the man's surrender. He is growing tired and seems to give in to the inevitable.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 3-4: “you have noticed now / that a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.”
- Line 15: “the white of surrender is not yet flying.”
- Line 28: “I am failing, flagging.”
-
The Clouds and the Bird
The man's interactions (or lack thereof) with clouds and the bird in the poem come to symbolize his isolation, fragility, and insignificance. The speaker is trapped on an upper floor of an extremely tall building. He's so high up that he appears, to those on the ground, "Small in the clouds": a mere speck in the sky, so far away that his individuality gets lost in the magnitude of the day's horror. "Does anyone see / a soul worth saving," he asks, tragically suggesting how distance has obscured his humanity itself.
The bird that flies past similarly makes the man seem like a small and insignificant figure. He's just one of many people stuck in the tower. A bird "goes by" minding its own business, presumably uninterested in the human drama unfolding right by its side.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 5-8: “In fact I am waving, waving. / Small in the clouds, but waving, waving. / Does anyone see / a soul worth saving?”
- Line 17: “A bird goes by.”
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Alliteration
Alliteration fills the poem with rough, unpredictable music and brings specific moments to life on the page. In short, it helps to dramatize the speaker's terrible situation. The punchy, plosive /b/ sounds of line 2, for example, call readers' attention to the speaker's horrific surroundings:
Through a distant shot of a building burning
This alliteration jumps out at the reader, hinting at the brutality of the attack and of the flames themselves. The poem uses this same technique in line 14:
The heat behind me is bullying, driving,
Those /b/ sounds make the heat seem menacing and forceful, as though it's out to get the speaker deliberately.
Other sounds create notably different effects. Take the sibilant alliteration in lines 7 and 8:
Does anyone see
a soul worth saving?The speaker has established already that he is utterly, tragically alone, closer to the clouds than to the emergency services on the ground. These /s/ sounds cast a whispery hush over the speaker's call for help, creating an eerie quiet that's at odds with the chaos going on around him.
Elsewhere, the poem's sounds evoke its imagery. In line 4, for instance, the sharp /t/ alliteration of "twirling, turning" suggests the sounds of the man's shirt snapping in the wind. Broader consonance adds to the effect, filling the line with sharp, crisp sounds and growling /r/ sounds that suggest the man's effort:
that a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.
The sounds of the poem's final two lines are similarly evocative, those dull, muffled /n/, /m/ and /f/ sounds helping to convey the speaker's sorrow and fatigue:
My arm is numb and my nerves are sagging.
Do you see me, my love. I am failing, flagging.Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 2: “building burning”
- Line 4: “twirling, turning”
- Line 7: “see”
- Line 8: “soul,” “saving”
- Line 10: “watching, watching”
- Line 12: “washing”
- Line 14: “behind,” “bullying”
- Line 17: “bird,” “by”
- Line 20: “wind-milling, wheeling”
- Lines 21-22: “believing, / believing”
- Line 24: “breathing”
- Line 27: “numb,” “nerves”
- Line 28: “me, my,” “failing, flagging”
-
Asyndeton
Unlock all 289 words of this analysis of Asyndeton in “Out of the Blue (Excerpt),” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Metaphor
-
Repetition
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Pegging out washing
- White of surrender
- Wind-milling
- Gills
- Sagging
- Flagging
Pegging out washing-
(Location in poem: Line 12: “pegging out washing”)
Hanging up laundry on a clothesline using pegs.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Out of the Blue (Excerpt)”
-
Form
This poem is number 10 in a longer sequence entitled "Out of the Blue" (which also has an accompanying film) and is inspired by real-life footage of 9/11. It's also a dramatic monologue, spoken from an imagined perspective separate from the poet's.
The poem's 28 lines are broken up into seven quatrains (that is, four-line stanzas). The lines themselves feature frequent enjambment and vary widely in length, which keeps the poem feeling somewhat freewheeling and unpredictable, as though the speaker's situation is unfolding in real-time. The uniformity of the quatrains, meanwhile, gives the poem a distinctive shape on the page. Squint a little, and the poem looks a bit like a tower, with each stanza appearing like a separate story of the building.
-
Meter
"Out of the Blue" uses free verse, meaning it has no strict meter. This suits the poem's confused, panicked tone.
Note, though, the frequent placement of present participles and gerunds at the end of lines. The second and fourth line of each stanza ends with an "-ing" word, as do some others. Though this doesn't create a regular meter, it does create a sense of metrical irresolution throughout the poem: unstressed syllables like "-ing" make for weak endings, as opposed to the more satisfying click of a stressed syllable. Take lines 13-16, each of which ends with an "-ing" verb (or two):
[...] trying.
[...] bullying, driving,
[...] flying.
[...] leaving, diving.The use of so many present participles makes the poem's language start to sound generally monotonous and repetitive, evoking just how long the speaker has been hoping for someone to save him. These weak endings also capture the speaker's increasing fatigue and despair as he realizes that there's nothing anyone can do to help.
-
Rhyme Scheme
The poem is filled with rhyme, but its rhyme scheme is not entirely predictable. In all stanzas except the last, the second and fourth lines rhyme. In a few stanzas, the first and third lines rhyme as well. And the majority of the poem's lines end with an "-ing" suffix. As a result, the poem starts to sound quite repetitive; it keeps circling back to the same sound again and again. It, like the speaker, is trapped.
Stanza 1 features the rhyme scheme ABCB:
[...] out. A
[...] burning B
[...] now C
[...] turning. BThe second stanza repeats the word "waving" at the end of lines 1 and 2, creating the rhyme scheme AABA:
[...] waving. A
[...] waving. A
[...] now B
[...] saving. AThe third stanza rhymes its first and third lines as well as the usual second and fourth, making the pattern ABAB:
[.. .] come? A
[...] watching B
[...] crums A
[...] washing? BThe fourth stanza uses this pattern again—except, this time, the first and third lines ("trying"/"flying") also form slant rhymes with the second and fourth ("driving"/"diving"). As such, one might actually mark the rhyme scheme here as AAAA:
[.. .] trying. A
[...] driving, A / B
[...] flying. A
[...] diving. A / BAnd the final stanza rhymes AABB:
[.. .] tiring. A
[...] firing. A
[...] sagging. B
[...] flagging. BNearly all of these rhymes feature weak endings: that final "-ing" is unstressed (as in "flagging"). All these weak endings evoke the speaker's increasing fatigue and despair as the poem—and his terrible situation—wears on.
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Speaker
-
The poem's speaker is a man trapped in the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks, after the plane has struck the building but before the tower has collapsed. Armitage has said he pictures this man as an English trader, but this excerpt itself doesn't make this specific (other poems in the "Out of the Blue" sequence do). The poem, then, can be considered a dramatic monologue—a piece of writing in someone else's imagined voice. Armitage based it on real footage from 9/11.
The speaker addresses an unspecified "you" directly throughout the poem. At some moments, this seems to refer directly to the person far below, recording footage of the man on their camera. At others, however, it sounds like the speaker is talking from beyond the grave to someone looking at this footage in which he appears as a spec in "a distant shot of a building burning." Really, it doesn't matter who he's addressing; no one can help the man, giving the poem an atmosphere of futility and heart-wrenching inevitability.
The speaker clearly, desperately wants to survive. He waves a white shirt to signal for help, "waving" and "waving" it despite knowing that those far below can barely see him. When help doesn't come, he grows confused; he wonders, rhetorically, whether the people think that instead of signaling for help he's just "shaking crumbs" from his shirt or hanging up the laundry.
The "heat behind [him] is bullying, driving"—pushing him closer to jumping in order to escape the smoke and flames. Still, he refuses to admit defeat. He sees others falling but is "not at the point of leaving, diving" into the air and certain death. He's waving his shirt because he still thinks that he might make it out alive—not as the "white of surrender."
As the poem goes on, however, the man's body grows tired and he starts to lose his will to keep going. Seeming to accept the inevitable, he calls out to his "love" in the poem's final moments. That ending verb, "flagging," is a pun: it means getting weaker and it harkens back to the flag of surrender mentioned earlier in the poem. The implication is that the man has sensed the truth: he is going to die, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
-
-
“Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Setting
-
The poem is set on September 11, 2001, the day of the infamous terrorist attacks on the United States. It specifically takes place shortly after the first hijacked plane struck the North Tower of New York City's World Trade Center (at 8:46 a.m.) but before that tower collapsed (at 10:28 a.m.).
The speaker, like many others, is trapped on an upper floor with no way out, waving a white shirt to signal that he's alive and in need of rescue. He's at cloud/bird height, however, rendering the emergency services on the ground far below helpless. The building is burning, the ferocious heat pushing the man closer and closer to jumping or falling out the window—as others around him have already done, their bodies spinning horribly through the air. If he looks down, the "depth" to the ground is "appalling."
The image of the man is captured by a distant camera. This camera "shot" represents the reader's vantage point; the poem's readers are mere observers of the man's suffering, incapable of doing anything to save him.
The reader gets insight into the man's experience, relayed with vivid immediacy. At the same time, the poem's audience knows that this has all already happened and that his man is undoubtedly dead, creating an unsettling dramatic irony.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Out of the Blue (Excerpt)”
Literary Context
Simon Armitage is one of the UK's most popular contemporary poets. He was born in Yorkshire in 1963 and began writing poetry at a young age. His first collection, Zoom!, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 1989 and was an immediate success, selling well and getting shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. The outward simplicity of Armitage's poetry often conceals complex emotional worlds and reflects the influence of other important 20th-century poets such as Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, and Philip Larkin.
This poem is part of a longer sequence titled "Out of the Blue," written in 2005 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It was released with an accompanying film, as well as in audio and book format. There were many literary responses to 9/11, including Don DeLillo's novel Falling Man and the Poetry After 9/11 anthology, which collected work by numerous New York-based poets not long after the attacks.
Historical Context
On September 11, 2001, the Islamist extremist network al-Qaeda launched four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States. Terrorists hijacked four planes, deliberately crashing two into New York City's World Trade Center (a.k.a, the Twin Towers) and one into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense); the fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania following a fight with passengers on board. Nearly 3,000 people, hailing from 102 countries, were killed; 67 of those people were from the UK.
This poem focuses specifically on the attack on the World Trade Center. The North Tower was hit on a crisp blue morning at 8:46 a.m. Many assumed that the collision was an accident until the South Tower was hit 17 minutes later by a second plane. The impact of the planes caused fires throughout the towers and destroyed numerous stairwells, trapping many people on the upper levels (like the man in this poem). Both towers soon collapsed, creating an enormous cloud of dust and debris and killing anyone left inside.
The towers were targeted in part because of their symbolic power. At the time of their completion, they were the tallest buildings in the world and were a center of economic activity. The attacks were also widely televised, with millions around the world watching them live or on the news shortly after. Being so well documented, 9/11 produced a number of famous—and heartbreaking—images. These include Richard Drew's haunting "Falling Man" photograph and Thomas Dallal's "Impending Death," which depicts people trapped in the burning North Tower leaning from the windows to escape the smoke and flames.
Armitage had a particular piece of footage in mind when writing "Out of the Blue": that of a figure waving a white object from a window high up in the North Tower. In a BBC piece on the collection, Armitage describes how "the frame of the picture wobbles around and can't always keep the person in the tower in focus. To try and replicate that a little bit, I use repetition in the poem. So I've tried to get the nature of the poem to resemble the nature of that actual piece of film."
-
More “Out of the Blue (Excerpt)” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Armitage at Boston University — Listen to the poet read and discuss a range of his work, including "Out of the Blue."
-
A Brief Biography — Learn more about Armitage's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
-
Armitage on Poetry — Watch a brief interview with Armitage in which he discusses his poetic philosophy as well as the violence that appears in this poem.
-
Poetry After 9/11 — Read an article about the various poetic responses to the September 11 attacks.
-
"Out of the Blue" Film — Watch part of the film that accompanied "Out of the Blue," in which actor Rufus Sewell reads this section of the poem. (Content note: this film includes the actual documentary footage that inspired the poem, which is quite disturbing.)
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Simon Armitage
-
