Stevie Smith

I've always loved that poem, too. There was a film about her, starring, I believe, Glenda Jackson.

Poor soul, Poor girl

(A Debutante)

I cannot imagine anything nicer
Than to be struck by lightening and killed suddenly crossing a field
As if somebody cared.
Nobody cares whether I am alive or dead.

- Stevie Smith.

yes glenda jackson, very good film, very good poet

sadly not well represented on the internet, very few poems can be found

if i can find my anthology i'll post some of my faves

not waving but drowning and the wanderer are two i love the most

Croft

Aloft,
In the loft,
Sits Croft;
He is soft.

- Stevie Smith

In response to those two poems proving that brevity is the soul of something or other, her's a slightly longer Stevie Smith poem. Look out inparticular for what she does in the last line of the first verse, because that notable poetry critic george MacBeth says that you should because: "One oh her most remarkable qualities, as in the fourth line of the first stanza, is to introduce sudden gramatical oddities and changes of tone which successfully convey the eccentricity of a childlike temperament. It would be very hard to get away with this sort of thing unless one could do it absolutely naturally, and for this reason Stevie Smith had had no imitators".

Don't you just love the fact that nobody has been able to copy her? I do! Anyway, it's over to you, Stevie...



Fafnir and the Knights

In the quiet waters
Of the forest pool
Fafnir the dragon
His tongue will cool

His tongue will cool
And his muzzle dip
Until the soft waters have
His muzzle tip

Happy simple creature
In his coat of mail
With a mild bright eye
And a waving tail

Happy the dragon
In the days expended
Before the time had come for dragons
To be hounded

Delivered in their simplicity
To the Knights of the Advancing Band
Who seeing the simple dragon
Must kill him out of hand

The time has not come yet
But must come soon
Meanwhile happy Fafnir
Take thy rest in the afternoon

Take thy rest
Fafnir while thou mayest
In the long grass
Where thou liest

Happy knowing not
In thy simplicity
That the knights have come
To do away with thee.

When thy body shall be torn
And thy lofty spirit
Broken into pieces
For a knight's merit

When thy lifeblood shall be spilt
And thy Being mild
In torment and dismay
To death beguiled

Fafnir, I shall say then,
Thou art better dead
For the knights have burnt thy grass
And thou couldst have not fed.

I like that one even more than Not waving, but drowning, Tino!

Thankyou Cumulus, I am glad that you - at least - appreciate my thread.

I was just rereading the dragon thing - with a little less awe because I'm pretty drunk right now - and it strikes me as beautifully simple in the way that the feminist movement's antipathy to war was beautiful and simple, ie it's all men's fault.

All that ******* testosterone...



and to the automatic swear word deleting service: could you at least get the number of asterisks right. There are 7 letters in the word that begins with F and ends in G...

I just want to post my favourite Stevie Smith poem before this thread fades quietly away into the A2K poetry thread graveyard...

Anger's freeing power

I had a dream three walls stood up wherein a raven bird
Against the walls did beat himself and was not this absurd?

For sun and rain beat in that cell that had its fourth wall free
And daily blew the summer shower and the rain came presently

And all the pretty summer time and all the winter too
That foolish bird did beat himself till he was black and blue.

Rouse up, rouse up, my raven bird, fly by the open wall
You make a prison of a place that is not one at all.

I took my raven by the hand, Oh come, I said, my Raven,
And I will take you by the hand and you shall fly to heaven.

But oh he sobbed and oh he sighed and in a fit he lay
Until two fellow ravens came and stood outside to say:

You wretched bird, conceited lump
You well deserve to pine and thump.

See now a wonder, mark it well
My bird rears up in angry spell,

Oh do I then? he says, and careless flies
O'er flattened wall at once to heaven's skies.

And in my dream I watched him go
And I was glad, I loved him so,

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.

Thanks Tino = for introducing me to Stevie Smith

I was pretty knocked out reading through for the first time.
Is there more?

About Anger, I mean?

Thankyou Endy.

I'm glad that you found this offbeat poet worth reading.

Imagine if somebody asked you to write a poem about a cell with one wall missing and a bird that refused to escape until it got angry. I think I would say [never having been put in that position] you have got to be kidding. I wouldn't know where to begin describing such a thing in verse, yet Stevie does it a gallop without clipping a fence. I like the way her mind worked.

As to more poems dealing with anger I'll make it my mission to see if I can find any.

Thanx again.