Black Humor Through Poetry in Stevie Smiths Not Waving But Drowning
In the poetry of Margaret “Stevie” Smith (1902-1971), life and death are constantly being juxtaposed. For Smith, life was usually a painful or tedious experience and death a blessed escape from its misery and futility. Having had a religious upbringing, she is also much preoccupied with God, but cannot accept traditional Christian teaching about redemption and heaven. Death is seen as an end, rather than a beginning and a relief, instead of a gateway to a reward. In “Not Waving but Drowning”, Smith’s philosophy of life as a pointless and sad experience for many people, is focused on the event of a drowning man. In the style of the poem, she writes characteristically, here, in the off-hand, irregular lyricism - often bordering on the conversational - which is the distinctive feature of her manner.
“Smith was born in Yorkshire, England but lived all but the first three years of her life in her aunt’s house in Palmers Green, London” (Washington University Libraries). She went to work at a publishing office owned by George Newnes, Ltd. soon after her graduation from North London Collegiate School (Washington Univeristy Libraries). Although continuing to write through the 1940’s and 1950’s her work was ignored by critics and the public until about the last ten years of her life (Washington Univeristy Libraries). Smith received the prestigious Queen's Gold Medal award for her poetry in 1969, two years before her death (Washington Univeristy Libraries).
Smith uses simple, short sentences, “barely audible” to express “feelings such as emotional pain, tenderness, sadness, loss, and despair” (Sternlicht 63). “Not Waving but Drowning” is saturated with...
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...na, alliteration, tone, and theme the poet would have clearly had the daunting task of conveying her message to us with rather unfamiliar and impossible alternative methods. The poet’s method instead allows her to fully express the true experience of a melancholy and humorously comedic approach to death and inevitably “her own extinction” as well as our own (Sternlicht 95).
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In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
The poems “Sea Rose” by H.D and “Vague Poem” by Elizabeth Bishop were both written by two women who took over the Victorian era. H.D’s works of writing were best known as experimental reflecting the themes of feminism and modernism from 1911-1961. While Bishop’s works possessed themes of longing to belong and grief. Both poems use imagery, which helps to make the poem more concrete for the reader. Using imagery helps to paint a picture with specific images, so we can understand it better and analyze it more. The poems “Sea Rose” and “Vague Poem” both use the metaphor of a rose to represent something that can harm you, even though it has beauty.
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she uses the structure of her poem and rhetoric as concrete representation of her abstract beliefs about death to comfort and encourage readers into accepting Death when He comes. The underlying theme that can be extracted from this poem is that death is just a new beginning. Dickinson deftly reassures her readers of this with innovative organization and management, life-like rhyme and rhythm, subtle but meaningful use of symbolism, and ironic metaphors.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
The constant process of life and death, driven by an indestructible progression of time, explains the attitude of carpe diem expressed in three poems focused on human love being a fickle matter. Within the poems “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick, and “Youth’s the Season Made for Joys” by John Gay, the concept of how a shy attitude towards the inevitable end of all life is exposed as an inherently useless view. Nevertheless, though their primary themes and ideas of this constant procession of time are obviously expressed, the manner in which they do this, through figurative language and imagery, is the main point in which each of these three poems can be contrasted and examined
Mason, Jr., Julian D. The Poems of Phillis Wheatley. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
“Nobody heard him, the dead man, / but still he lay moaning:” This is how many people go on through life. Many are dying inside but you would never know. It is possible for people to create masks to hide their emotions. Sometimes these masks are so deceptive that even close friends or family members cannot see through then until it is too late. In Stevie Smith’s poem, “Not Waving but Drowning” the writer effectively highlights how someone’s cry for help can be mistaken for joy. It is important for people to at least have someone who cares about them and knows them well enough to see when something is going wrong in their lives. This can often be the lifeline that saves one from drowning.
In the free verse poem "When death comes" by Mary Oliver, the speaker contemplates what the inevitability of what death means to humans. Structurally, the poem bears no rhyme scheme as it depicts the free thought of the speaker. The voice of the speaker in this poem resonates with curiosity and the idea of life after death. Through the utilization of rhetorical devices such as repetition, alliteration, symbolism, and personification, the reader will come to understand that underlying tone that death is imminent regardless of how one 's life is spent. Within the poem, the source of tension resides in the constant internal struggle to oust the cycle of life and death. In some instances, Oliver’s curiosity and acceptance of death allows her to
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
Stevie Smith’s poem Not Waving But Drowning, brings to light numerous parallels in the book and the play and it is alluded to several times. The play and the poem draw similar situation but towards the end leads into different endings. In the poem the man dies, this man we can associate with Sophie but in the book, we see that Sofie rescued, rescued by the man who was much farther out than her. This alludes to how in real life there are people who might be in more of a dire need, who are you can almost say “Much further out than you [think]”. Not Waving But Drowning embodies Bradie and Sofie’s situation, how Sofie struggles and Bradie struggle with depression, and how they connect and seek out each other’s help. Help they cannot give because
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading & Reacting & Writing. 4th ed. Boston: Earl McPeek, 2000. 388-423.
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 8th. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.