Not Waving but Drowning

by Stevie Smith

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Literature

76 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1958

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

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poem is so short I can reproduce it here:

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.

Profound...so many are not waving but drowning and so often no one notices.

[Charles Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is always so challenging as a writer to communicate something profoundly true and revealing about the human experience in a way that everyone can understand. Stevie Smith tackles the nuanced and gripping internal struggle of loneliness in her minimalist poem “Not Waving, But Drowning”. Part of the remarkable potency in the poetic medium, is how the few words that lyric speaker uses can create a solid bridge of understanding between two minds of the writer and the reader without even using real life examples. In “Not Waving, But Drowning”, Smith writes from the perspective of a drowning man and a person who came too late to save them because of a misunderstanding of external experiences. The poem is only a short twelve lines of story, but Smith is able to take a dive into the metacognitive distance that people put between themselves and others when dealing with an internal crisis.
Famous essayist Henry David Thoreau argues, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, an idea that Smith breaks down from the perspective of the external world and the man who has drowned. Smith spend half the poem talking about how the onlookers of the drowning man were too far out to save them, thought that the man was actually waving cheerful (not drowning), and the circumstances would have not allowed for him to survive. Often times, we decide that we do not want to bother others with our story, and that we should keep our problems to ourselves. So many middle schoolers live their lives like the drowning man in this poem, floating along and pretending like they are doing “fine” to everyone who is far away from them. My hope, is that through students practicing using their voice in writing, they will begin to recognize the importance of sharing with others the pains that they feel. In my classroom, I never want any of my students to feel as though the way forward for them is to float along without expressing themselves.
Although many of my students may relate to the feelings of the lyric speaker in “Not Waving, But Drowning”, the poem is by far the most hopeless and depressed text that the students will be reading in terms of voice. If all of my students began writing poetry as dark and dreary as Stevie’s, I’m sure I would be getting some calls from parents as well as my school’s administration. An ideal classroom usage of this poem would be to not only use this poem as a way to show the importance of sharing the pain we feel with others, but to also be a model text for the “Reverse Poems” writing strategy from Gallagher (41). To prompt the “Reverse Poems” exercise, it would first be helpful to take time to analyze what the author is trying to say with the refrain of “Not Waving, But Drowning” and to relate the ideas to the idiom of Henry David Thoreau about “Quiet Desperation” so that students understand what Stevie Smith is trying to say. But after the conversation about relaying emotion and being distant, the teacher should pose the question about what if the author was trying to be distant but was too close? What if the author was a thirty-two-year-old man who wanted to wave goodbye to his grandma because he was in a hurry, but was ignored and instead was “drowning” in a hug that she gave him and was late to a business meeting? I think by prompting a change from desperation to desiring distance could allow students to explore how they express themselves through a story (either real or fictional) that they would write using the closing line from “Not Waving, But Drowning”.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stein's writing is mad and I love her. I have no idea why this edition has my cover but is under a different title and author...

[eleanorwalker · Rating 4 out of 5]

seems fitting reading poetry that ponders death on a rainy Monday morning

[Sagar Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely little poems. I hope to remember the black raindrops on a March morning, the fresh air, and the stoicism in the face of grief.

[Randall DeVallance · Rating 5 out of 5]

I confess that there isn't much poetry I can truly say I've enjoyed reading. Whether I just haven't been exposed to enough poetry in my life, or because it's so much more difficult to write a decent poem than prose, most poetry I've read has left me cold. Stevie Smith is a rare exception. There's a mixture of doom and irreverence, crushing depression and childlike whimsy present in her work that I find absolutely intoxicating.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though Stevie Smith is not well known I love all of her poems. She has a different style than other poets and many of her poems have drawings to go along with them. At the surface this poem does not seem that complicated but I feel it accurately portrays what it feels like for someone to have depression.

[B. Rule · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a couple gems in this collection, but overall it left me quite cold. Smith's style is simple, so much so that it often reads like children's verse. While I liked a few of the darker ones, the subjects are often silly and the tone occasionally hectoring. Not destined to be amongst my favorites.

[Ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevie❤️ never disappoints



I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going, I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.

I have a friend
At the end Of the world.
His name is a breath

[Andy Hickman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Waving but Drowning, by Stevie Smith
The title alone gets a rating

[Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

😶😶😶😢

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

short poem but wow

[Afomya Alemayehu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was struck by the haunting nature of this poem

[techeriez · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this because of mitski. really simple poems but has deep meaning.

[Laska · Rating 5 out of 5]

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE!! BUT NOWHERE A DROP TO DRINK!!!!

[Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful, delicious words and rhythms that portray such meaning and character. I know I’ll read them again and again.

[Eduard Gafton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read as part of The Norton Anthology of Poetry

[Sybiee Colvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this - a really slim and funny little book