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Stevie Smith.
This comprehensive and welcoming edition draws on the whole of Stevie Smith's output in poetry, prose and drawings from Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) to Scorpion and Other Poems (1972). Hermione Lee's introduction and arrangement bring out the connections between Stevie Smith's different writings, and show us what an extraordinary and original writer she was. The selection is complemented by biographical and textual notes, and forms an attractive introduction to the work of an idiosyncratic English genius.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 12, 2024
Hated this !
March 14, 2009
Funny. Awful. Gruesome little poems that sneak up on you. Al those sing song nursery rhymish rhymes...
Some were just funny. Being me I liked the macabre ones best.
Some were just funny. Being me I liked the macabre ones best.
June 13, 2021
Having come across Stevie Smith in a collection of female poets, I already suspected I would be a big fan of an extended collection, which in fact proved to be the case. Smith is just so similar to me – going by what’s on the page, at least – that it feels at times like reading something I wrote myself. At other times, she’s profoundly weird. I love it.
The German People:
“Is there anything more beautiful than the naked body? Oh yes thanks, right off without any call to hard work, I can think of things that are a whole lot more beautiful than the naked body.”
“Oh heaven help Deutschland when it kicks out the Jews, with their practical intelligence that might keep Germany from all the dream darkness, like the forests had got hold of them again, and the Romans calling their Legions back along the Via Aurelia.”
What a thing to write in 1936.
The Church:
“But now I think the Church should stand up, should get right up now, and say: Stupidity is a sin. And then it should teach in very difficult to understand, very high-up language, not simple at all, but really very difficult, and it should teach the philosophy of Christianity in very high-up terms, and it should always speak high-up and well above people’s heads, so they have trouble to understand. And then the church might be empty.”
“Don’t-care-if-it-is-above-you, stretch-a-bit-you-lazy-hound. And not a bit affable and simple, and not very kind, but very deep and ingenious. Well look then they might try this. It certainly would be a change.”
Mrs Simpkins:
“Death’s not a separation or alteration or parting it’s just a one-handled door”
Casmilus:
“Sighing again he turns into the Court House, sighing again to think that no rose is without thorn, and even Persephone must have a mother. The ebony portal clangs behind him. It will go hard with the dead today.”
Dear Karl:
“Dear Karl, I send you Walt Whitman in a sixpenny book.
‘How dilettante,’ I hear you observe, ‘I hate these selections
Arbitrarily made to meet a need that is not mine and a taste
Utterly antagonistic, wholly alien, egregiously coercionary
Of individualism’s, egotism’s, insolence’s light-fingered
traffickings.”’
The Story of a Story:
“ ‘How can you look at a horse at such a moment? You want it both ways,’ said Bella.
Helen looked at Bella and laughed. ‘It is the moment to look at a horse.’”
“ ‘Do you think it is immoral to write about people?’
‘No no, it is very difficult.’
[…]
“You go into houses under cover of friendship and steal away the words that are spoken.”
‘Oh, it is difficult, so difficult, one cannot remember them, the words run away; when most one wants the word, it is gone.”
The Holiday:
“These rewards and punishments, this grading, this father-son-teacher-pupil idea, it too much bears the human wish for something finished off and tidy, something one can grasp lovingly and tight, trusting to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
Pad, pad:
“Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.”
The Blue from Heaven:
“Yes, Arthur has passed away
Gladly he has laid down his reigning powers
He has gone to ride in the blue light
Of the peculiar towering cornflowers.”
Anger’s Freeing Power:
“Yet when I woke my eyes were wet
To think Love had not freed my pet
Anger it was that won him hence
As only Anger taught him sense.
Often my tears fall in a shower
Because of Anger’s freeing power.”
Dido’s Farewell to Aeneas:
“Come Death, you know you must come when you’re called
Although you’re a god. And this way, and this way, I call you.”
Great Unaffected Vampires and the Moon:
“A Christian crescent never would have lent
Unchristian monsters such close company
And so I say she was no heavenly light
But devil’s in that business manifest
And as the vampires seemed quite unaware
I thought she’d lost her soul for nothing lying there.”
Magna est Veritas:
“Agreeing with that Latin writer, Great is Truth and will prevail in a bit.”
My Muse:
“All the poems Poetry writes may be called ‘Heaven, a Detail’ or ‘Hell, a Detail’.”
“All Poetry has to do is make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will always be another poet.”
Terry Pratchett in the Last Hero: the singer is forgotten. The song remains.
Was He Married?:
“Do only human beings suffer from the irritation
I have mentioned? learn too that being comical
Does not ameliorate the desperation?
Only human beings feel this,
It is because they are so mixed.”
How Do You See?
“Oh Christianity, Christianity,
That has grown kinder now, as in the political world
The colonial system grows kinder before it vanishes, are you
vanishing?
Is it not time for you to vanish?”
On Writing:
“I take it that to judge well is one of the purposes of education, and how can you judge well if you are not grounded in the classics?”
“There can be no good art that is international. Art to be vigorous and gestund must use the material at hand.”
My two new favourite pieces of criticism advice.
Favourites: To the tune of the Coventry Carol; God and the Devil; Little Boy Lost; All Things Pass; In My Dreams; Autumn; Happiness; Old Ghosts; The Deserter; Lightly Bound; To An American Publisher; Not Waving But Drowning; ‘What is she writing? Perhaps it will be good’; The Jungle Husband; God the Eater; The Past; Who is This who Howls and Mutters?; Thoughts about the Person from Porlock; Thoughts about the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hell; Was He Married?; My Muse.
The German People:
“Is there anything more beautiful than the naked body? Oh yes thanks, right off without any call to hard work, I can think of things that are a whole lot more beautiful than the naked body.”
“Oh heaven help Deutschland when it kicks out the Jews, with their practical intelligence that might keep Germany from all the dream darkness, like the forests had got hold of them again, and the Romans calling their Legions back along the Via Aurelia.”
What a thing to write in 1936.
The Church:
“But now I think the Church should stand up, should get right up now, and say: Stupidity is a sin. And then it should teach in very difficult to understand, very high-up language, not simple at all, but really very difficult, and it should teach the philosophy of Christianity in very high-up terms, and it should always speak high-up and well above people’s heads, so they have trouble to understand. And then the church might be empty.”
“Don’t-care-if-it-is-above-you, stretch-a-bit-you-lazy-hound. And not a bit affable and simple, and not very kind, but very deep and ingenious. Well look then they might try this. It certainly would be a change.”
Mrs Simpkins:
“Death’s not a separation or alteration or parting it’s just a one-handled door”
Casmilus:
“Sighing again he turns into the Court House, sighing again to think that no rose is without thorn, and even Persephone must have a mother. The ebony portal clangs behind him. It will go hard with the dead today.”
Dear Karl:
“Dear Karl, I send you Walt Whitman in a sixpenny book.
‘How dilettante,’ I hear you observe, ‘I hate these selections
Arbitrarily made to meet a need that is not mine and a taste
Utterly antagonistic, wholly alien, egregiously coercionary
Of individualism’s, egotism’s, insolence’s light-fingered
traffickings.”’
The Story of a Story:
“ ‘How can you look at a horse at such a moment? You want it both ways,’ said Bella.
Helen looked at Bella and laughed. ‘It is the moment to look at a horse.’”
“ ‘Do you think it is immoral to write about people?’
‘No no, it is very difficult.’
[…]
“You go into houses under cover of friendship and steal away the words that are spoken.”
‘Oh, it is difficult, so difficult, one cannot remember them, the words run away; when most one wants the word, it is gone.”
The Holiday:
“These rewards and punishments, this grading, this father-son-teacher-pupil idea, it too much bears the human wish for something finished off and tidy, something one can grasp lovingly and tight, trusting to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
Pad, pad:
“Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.”
The Blue from Heaven:
“Yes, Arthur has passed away
Gladly he has laid down his reigning powers
He has gone to ride in the blue light
Of the peculiar towering cornflowers.”
Anger’s Freeing Power:
“Yet when I woke my eyes were wet
To think Love had not freed my pet
Anger it was that won him hence
As only Anger taught him sense.
Often my tears fall in a shower
Because of Anger’s freeing power.”
Dido’s Farewell to Aeneas:
“Come Death, you know you must come when you’re called
Although you’re a god. And this way, and this way, I call you.”
Great Unaffected Vampires and the Moon:
“A Christian crescent never would have lent
Unchristian monsters such close company
And so I say she was no heavenly light
But devil’s in that business manifest
And as the vampires seemed quite unaware
I thought she’d lost her soul for nothing lying there.”
Magna est Veritas:
“Agreeing with that Latin writer, Great is Truth and will prevail in a bit.”
My Muse:
“All the poems Poetry writes may be called ‘Heaven, a Detail’ or ‘Hell, a Detail’.”
“All Poetry has to do is make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will always be another poet.”
Terry Pratchett in the Last Hero: the singer is forgotten. The song remains.
Was He Married?:
“Do only human beings suffer from the irritation
I have mentioned? learn too that being comical
Does not ameliorate the desperation?
Only human beings feel this,
It is because they are so mixed.”
How Do You See?
“Oh Christianity, Christianity,
That has grown kinder now, as in the political world
The colonial system grows kinder before it vanishes, are you
vanishing?
Is it not time for you to vanish?”
On Writing:
“I take it that to judge well is one of the purposes of education, and how can you judge well if you are not grounded in the classics?”
“There can be no good art that is international. Art to be vigorous and gestund must use the material at hand.”
My two new favourite pieces of criticism advice.
Favourites: To the tune of the Coventry Carol; God and the Devil; Little Boy Lost; All Things Pass; In My Dreams; Autumn; Happiness; Old Ghosts; The Deserter; Lightly Bound; To An American Publisher; Not Waving But Drowning; ‘What is she writing? Perhaps it will be good’; The Jungle Husband; God the Eater; The Past; Who is This who Howls and Mutters?; Thoughts about the Person from Porlock; Thoughts about the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hell; Was He Married?; My Muse.
August 17, 2016
Interesting but odd. Poetry is such an individual thing. I read an entire book and like five out of one hundred poems...does that make the book worth reading?
April 18, 2024
Stevie Smith on 1900-luvun keskivaiheilla vaikuttanut brittirunoilija, jonka tyyli on makaaberin synkkä ja samalla humoristinen. Runoissa on lähtemistä ja kuolemista, kunnes sitten seuraavaksi on vuorossa brittiläiselle keskiluokkaisuudelle irvaileva limerikki.
Tässä kokoelmassa on mukana myös kaksi hänen lyhytromaaniaan jotka edustavat samaa kujeilevaa synkkyyttä kuin runotkin. Jättivät hieman kylmäksi runoihin verrattuna, täytyy sanoa. Mutta ihailen todella Smithin tyylin omintakeisuutta.
Lopetankin tämän kvartaalikatsauksen lainaamalla Stevie Smithin kenties tunnetuimman runon "Not Waving But Drowning"
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Tässä kokoelmassa on mukana myös kaksi hänen lyhytromaaniaan jotka edustavat samaa kujeilevaa synkkyyttä kuin runotkin. Jättivät hieman kylmäksi runoihin verrattuna, täytyy sanoa. Mutta ihailen todella Smithin tyylin omintakeisuutta.
Lopetankin tämän kvartaalikatsauksen lainaamalla Stevie Smithin kenties tunnetuimman runon "Not Waving But Drowning"
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
February 10, 2025
Interesting introduction for me to stevie smith's writing beyond the well known poem "Not waving but drowning". I love the mixture of literary devices used and the seemingly nonsensical alongside the serious.
June 19, 2025
Absolutely wonderful book! My favourite poet of all time!
September 1, 2012
Interesting as the only thing I knew by her was the "not waving but drowning" poem.
July 26, 2019
Poetry is so unique to each author and to each reader. Her style does not fit into a genre, which only makes its value greater in my opinion.
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May 1, 2017Faber and Faber (1983)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews