Stevie Smith is a poet worth discovering.

Drowning, not waving

BY PRADEEP SEBASTIAN

DEATH has become Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath's territory but what's often forgotten is that it also belongs to Stevie Smith. "I don't know why people are taught Death is a calamity," she wrote once. "I think he must be rather a dish." "Life is treacherous", she wrote elsewhere, "but you can always rely on Death."

One of England's most idiosyncratic modern poets, Stevie has a cult following around the world and yet I find she isn't well known or read often in India. She is a poet and an individual worth discovering. Born Florence Margaret Smith (September 20, 1902. "A Virgo. Rather a prim sign I always think, so I like to pretend I'm a bit of Libra") she took the name Stevie Smith.

Leaning towards death

In her poems, Death is a devoted servant who she can call on to end suffering at any time. In an early poem she wrote, "Come Death, you know you must come when you are called. Although you are a god. And this way, and this way, I call you." In her prose pieces, she noted, "I cannot help but like Oblivion better. Than being a human heart and human creature."

"Her poems", noted one critic, are "deathward leaning". One can see why Slyvia Plath admired her work. She writes that the thought of suicide actually came to her for the first time when she was eight years old. And she wasn't depressed by it. "The thought cheered me wonderfully." Her poems are honest, cheeky, trenchantly comic hymns to death in a style that was easy and yet passionate. Nursery rhymes crossed with John Donne. But she is quick to point out: "Learn too that being comical does not ameliorate the desperation."

"Not waving but drowning" is one of her best known poems: "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."

A small, beautiful, deeply felt film was made on her in 1978 with Glenda Jackson playing her perfectly. For forty years of her life she lived with her aunt who was a gentle, affectionate spinster. The film tenderly and wrenchingly captures the love and respect both had for each other. "I love Aunt and Aunt loves me" wrote Stevie. "Not a literary person, thank God." she adds. She called her "Lion Aunt". In a poem she spoke of their relationship: "It was a house of female habitation./Two ladies fair inhabited the house./And they were brave. For although Fear knocked loud/Upon the door, and said he must come in./They did not let him in." In her essay, `Simple Living', she notes, "People think because I never married I know nothing about the emotions. They are wrong. I loved my aunt."

"Dearest Lion Aunt" she addresses a poem to her aunt, "I will never leave you darling/To be eaten by the starling/For I love you more than ever/In the wet and stormy weather." When her aunt died she wrote: "You lie there, Aunt/In your grave now./Under a snow sky/You lie there now."

Other writings

Apart from The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith, there are three novels and a posthumously published collection of essays, letters and comical stories called Me Again: The Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith. When invited to read her poetry, she would deliberately chant them in an off-key voice. Boredom was another thing she wrote about: "luxuriating in its possibilities, sometimes, even now, I indulge in the utmost limit of boredom, so that when the telephone rings it is like an Angel of Grace breaking in on the orgy of boredom to which my soul is committed."

Stevie was often sick and felt it was her fate. "I'm utterly exhausted, worn to a frazzle," she declares. "When I'm asked on the Day of Judgement what I remember best and what has ruled my life, I think I shall say: Being tired, too tired for words." And later, in an extempore burst, she says, "I may look like a pocket Hercules, ha-ha, but I am dreadfully low on energy, and a tired person like me can't respond to love: it wears her out and she'd rather be dead. Oh, the flights and ecstasies of the spirit and the sad pursuing bones!"

In 1953 she attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. It was shortly after she had written "Not Waving but Drowning." She had called out to her sweet and gentle friend, Death, but he did not come. And then she went back to her tiredness and isolation. Soon after, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and lost her power of speech. In the hospital she struggled to write a letter to a friend. "Dear John," she begins and ends with: "I hope you are beautifully happy. Love, Stevie." She was 69 when she wrote her last poem, "Come Death": "I feel ill. What can the matter be?/I'd ask God to have pity on me/But I turn to the one I know and say:/Come Death, and carry me away./Ah me, sweet Death, you are the only god/Who comes as a servant when he is called, you know,/Listen then to this sound I make. It is sharp./Come Death. Do not be slow."