Through a Glass Darkly

The poet Michael Symmons Roberts looks in to the mirror for insight and revelation, reckoning and resolution and discovers the beguiling world through the looking glass.

Central to his thoughts are the famous words of St Paul from 1 Corinthians 13 - "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known," - which tantalisingly suggest that what we see now is only a partial vision of reality. In this world, a glimpse is all we get.

"Many parents will remember the time," Michael says, "usually around 18 months old, when a child first recognises that the baby in the mirror is not a sudden visitor. It's you!" This moment of self recognition (only shared with four kinds of ape, Asian elephants, bottlenose dolphins and, perhaps surprisingly, magpies) allows us all into the unsettling mixture of bare fact and mystery that confronts us in the mirror. Michael explains that, "The truth offered by such surfaces is fugitive, deceptive, elusive."

Through the music of Icelandic singer Bjork, Michael Jackson, Roxanna Panufnik and Philip Glass, and the poetry of George Herbert, Denise Levertov, John Ashbery and Carolyn Kizer, Michael takes us through the looking glass to a wonderland of paradox and possibilities. He says, "The reflective surfaces of glass or water offer visions of a different world, potentially treacherous or unknown, but a world you can enter physically if you dive into the lake, or visually if you allow your gaze to pass through it."

Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.