Pinter was born in East London in 1930. In 1949, inspired by the works of Beckett, he published his first poems under the pen name Harold Pinta. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama, and began touring Ireland with a Shakespeare company and working in provincial repertory theatres in England.
Pinter wrote his first play, The Room, in 1957. It features many motifs that would be common in his oeuvre, including a situation that seems quotidian but is charged with ambiguity and menace.
Pinter then went on to The Birthday Party, a play of muted anxiety and tension that bordered on the theater of the absurd. It remains one of Pinter’s most successful full-length plays, and it is considered the first of his “comedy of menace” pieces. Other popular plays in the next few years were The Homecoming, The Caretaker (1960), Old Times (1970), No Man's Land (1975), and Betrayal (1978). Pinter continued to compose plays but also tried his hand at poetry, screenwriting, and directing.
It Is Here by Harold Pinter
A thoughtful poem which uses sense imagery in order to explore a relationship between two people.
What sound was that?
I turn away, into the shaking room.
What was that sound that came in on the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?
It was the breath we took when we first met.
Listen. It is here.
The poem starts with a mysterious tone of the speaker where he realises there is a sound in the room. Perhaps the speaker is lost in thought, probably melancholy from being separated from his beloved. Though he cannot see who it is, he feels that the sound is enough instead of the presence of the beloved. The poem conveys that he can live all the rest of his days with just her memory.
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