All The Poems - Stevie Smith

by Stevie Smith, Will May (Editor/Introduction)

Stevie Smith is among the most popular British poets of the twentieth century. Her poem “Not Waving but Drowning” has been widely anthologized, and her life was celebrated in the classic 1978 movie Stevie. This new and updated edition of Stevie Smith’s collected poems includes hundreds of works from her thirty-five-year career. The Smith scholar Will May collects poems and illustrations from published volumes, provides fascinating details about their provenance, and describes the various versions Smith presented. Satirical, mischievous, teasing, disarming, Smith’s poems take readers from comedy to tragedy and back again, while her line drawings are by turns unsettling and beguiling.

Contents:
A good time was had by all (1937) --
Tender only to one (1938) --
Mother, what is man? (1942) --
Harold's leap (1950) --
Not waving but drowning (1957) --
Selected poems (1962) --
The frog prince and other poems (1966) --
Scorpion and other poems (1972) --
Appendices: I. uncollected poems --
II. Unpublished poems.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Nonfiction, Literature

806 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971), was an English poet and novelist.

Reviews

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ballad of Stevie Smith

Oh Stevie Smith how sad you seem
In all those poems you wrote
Was life such an unpleasant dream
And happiness remote?

It’s true you never got to know
Who poppa really was
And momma died when you were so
Alone you made no fuss

So many of your characters
Did meet a tragic fate
Like falling out of charter planes
Or being loved too late

There was an aunt a lioness
The kind that Christians fought
Who cleaned up after every mess
And polished every pot

You lived with her until she died
In nineteen-sixty-eight
Never once in all that time
Did you plan your escape

While still a girl you met a man
Who wore a sable cloak
And fell in love with his white hands
And eyes which never spoke

He stood in corners of your room
And beckoned with his thumb
Oh you stared back into the gloom
And hesitated some

So you wrote and drew and drew and wrote
And seldom stayed for tea
Always seeking the right note
To send His Majesty

The lines you drew weren’t very straight
Miss Lackadaisical
The music that your verses made
Lacked something musical

But somehow there was magic there
If one gazed long enough
At lines that like a lady’s hair
The winds of life made rough

Now you’ve been dead for many years
Your body in the ground
Fertilizes what our tears
Look for and haven’t found



.

[Julie]

7.0/10

There is something delightful about a poet who writes ... prosaically. Smith writes little poems that begin with banalities that turn into nuanced truths; out of trivialities, she fashions precious little gems of originality and significance. She is not a poet to be dismissed lightly, despite all indications to the contrary: her little rhymes which sometimes seem to verge on the very edge of doggerel turn into luminous thoughts on religion and death, two of her favourite subjects of dissection.

While she wrote most frequently about these, there is quite a body of work made up of wry commentary on duty, marriage. One of my favourites of these is:

The Octopus

Darling little Tom and Harry,
When time comes for your to marry,
Lullaby,
Mother will be close at hand,
Close at hand

Little girlies, you who marry
Darling Tom and darling Harry
By and by
Understand
Mother will be close at hand
Close at hand

She is an easy poet to like, her intelligence and bright wit beckon the reader to read one more ... and just one more after that, trying to follow the path of her capricious and ingenious mind.

She thought of herself as quite an average kind of poet:

All poetry has to do is to 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.

... but I would have to differ and say, she was quite an uncommon and perceptive one.

[Jack Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such uniquely wonderful poetry - I can't believe I hadn't heard of Stevie Smith before my degree led e to her beautiful and fascinating work. The line drawing illustrations Smith accompanies her poetry match the awkwardness of the poetics, and elevate the poems to a dimension somewhere between nonsense and fairytales, giving the impression of disorder whilst maintaining enormous control over rhyme, metre, and rhythm. Incredible.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will admit to skimming this because when you put ALL of Stevie Smith's poems in one book, that's a lot of poems. Luckily they retain much of their original line-drawn, quirky artwork, and the entire collection feels like Stevie Smith through and through.

If you read Smith through the context of her era, some of the ideas in these poems may be more surprising. She was born in 1902 and died in 1971, and some of her earlier poems are quite daring and full of sarcasm and independence (thank goodness.) There are also a lot of silly little poems, but overall they range widely in tone and length.

A few favorites:

"Mother, among the Dustbins"
"I HATE THIS GIRL"
"The Violent Hand"
"Not Waving but Drowning" (this is the poem most people know of Stevie if they know one at all!)

I received a copy of this from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

[Taube · Rating 5 out of 5]

In November of 1962, three months before her death, Sylvia Plath wrote to Stevie Smith: 'I better say straight out that I am an addict of your poetry, a desperate Smith addict.' Guess what? I am too.

[trestitia ⵊⵊⵊ deamorski]

şuradan geldim:

[DW]

A moral judgement on every topic imaginable.

I like the editor's comment that Smith's poetry "claims then disavows kinship far and wide.' Disavowal is a very powerfully felt sentiment in her works.

I wanted to get beyond her most famous poem 'Not Waving but Drowning' which is what brought me to this book.

When the bitterness is mixed with whimsy, I think she is at her best. Not because bitterness isn't warranted but because her lines are the most inspired when they undermine the world with the off-handedly absurd.

The Hat is definitely my favourite.

She makes great observations on the banality of every day moments and I quite liked 'Emily writes such a good letter'.

I also like how she turns quaint, pithy rhyme schemes into a way of critiquing the lack of critical reflection in England's view of itself, as in 'The Days of Yore'.

[Hatoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favorite modern poetry collection. It occupies a special place in my heart because I wrote my Master’s thesis on her poetry.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you crossed Edward Lear with Ogden Nash and then threw in a bit of William Blake you'd have the recipe for Stevie Smith. Wonderful poetry!

[Rosa Jamali · Rating 5 out of 5]

شعری از استیوی اسمیت

فارسیِ رُزا جمالی




دست تکان نمی‌داد چرا که غرقه شده بود



کسی او را نشنید

مردی مُرده

افتاده بود

و ناله می کرد

بیشتر ازینکه فکرش را می‌کردی من پس رفته بودم

بر امواج نمی غلتید

چراکه غرق شده بود.

بی‌چاره!

همیشه دوست داشت مخفی باشد

و حالا مرده

گفتند

حتما سردش شده و قلب‌اش ایستاده.

اما نه!

نه!

همیشه سردش بود

حتما مرده‌اش می‌نالد

تمامِ زندگی ام چه دور بودم

دست تکان نمی‌دادم

که داشتم غرق می‌شدم.




استیوی اسمیت 1972-1902

در سال 1969 نشان طلای ملکه را در شعر دریافت کرد.

او از ترانه های عامیانه کودکان و وزن‌های فلکلور در شعرش بسیار استفاده کرده است. طنز، شیطنت و بازیگوشی های کودکانه ای با کلمات در کارش دیده می شود. سیلویا پلات خودش را معتاد به خواندن اشعاراستیوی اسمیت می دانست. استیوی اسمیت در شعرهایش دنیایی مالیخولیایی را به تصویر می کشد و نوعی افسردگی و گرایش به مرگ در آثارش مشاهده می شود .اسمیت از تومور مغزی درگذشت.

شعری "دست تکان نمی داد چراکه غرق شده بود" یکی از ده شعر مشهور در بریتانیاست. او در زمینه ادبیات داستانی هم دارای آثار ارزشمندی ست.



رُزا جمالی، شاعر، نویسنده، نمایشنامه نویس، مترجم، پژوهشگر و منتقد ادبی‌ست. از او تا کنون بیش از پانزده عنوان کتاب در زمینه‌های مختلف منتشر شده است. او دانش آموخته ی کارشناسی ادبیات نمایشی از دانشکده ‌‍ سینما تئاتر دانشگاه هنر و کارشناسی ارشد ادبیات انگلیسی از دانشگاه تهران است.


http://rosajamali.blogfa.com/post/83

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

So a person can come along like a thief—pretty!—
Stealing a look, pinching the sound and feel,
Lick the icicle broken from the bank
And still say nothing at all, only cry pretty.

Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you’ll be able
Very soon not even to cry pretty
And so be delivered entirely from humanity
This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty.

[DL]

Didn’t speak to me

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

In any given book store, if this book and a collection of Dickinson are on the poetry shelves, they will unquestionably be the two finest books there.

[Casey Sloan · Rating 5 out of 5]

funniest poet i’ve encountered

[Mariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of poems and illustrations, that tells some harsh things in a childish kind of way. It’s awkward and I’m saying it as a compliment.

[E. Merrill Brouder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I slowly picked away at this book for months before I suddenly caught the Stevie Smith bug. After that, I finished the last 500 pages in 4 days; I just could not put the book down. What can I say? She is very fun– basically Shel Silverstein for adults.

[Kerfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, for me, The Emperor Has No Clothes. I was eager to read this much-praised volume of Smith's poetry.

Out of 700 pages, I bookmarked less than 20 poems.

It's not that I dislike her disdainful and sarcastic view of humanity. But perhaps she should have written...I don't know, plays? essays? or actually her drawings are quite nice...she might have done much better as a cartoonist. As a poet--just doesn't work for me. The rhythm and rhyme are both clunky, for one. And it's not really that amusing or clever.

And really, 700 pages? That's too much for almost anyone's work to stand up to. this is not a major poet by anyone's standards, and her work just can't take that much weight.