Stevie Smith

## Biography

Florence Margaret “Stevie” Smith was born on September 20, 1902, in Yorkshire, England. She was called "Peggy" within her family, but acquired the name "Stevie" as a young woman when she was riding in the park with a friend who said that she reminded him of the jockey Steve Donoghue.

She was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. **Her father left the family to join the North Sea Patrol when she was very young**. At age three she moved with her sister and mother to the northern London suburb Palmers Green. This was her home until her death in 1971. **Her mother died when she was a teenager** and she and her sister lived with their aunt, an important figure throughout her life, known as “The Lion.” After high school, Smith attended North London Collegiate School for Girls. She began as a secretary with the magazine publisher George Newnes and went on to be the private secretary to Sir Nevill Pearson and Sir Frank Newnes. **She began writing poetry in her twenties while working at George Newnes**. **Her first book, *Novel on Yellow Paper***, *or Work It Out for Yourself* (J. Cape) **was published in 1936 and drew heavily on her own life experience, examining the unrest in England during World War I**. **Her first collection of verse**, *A Good Time Was Had By All* (J. Cape, 1937), **also contained rough sketches or doodles, which became characteristic of her work**. These drawings have both a feeling of caprice and doom, and the poetry in the collection is stylistically typical of Smith as it **conveys serious themes in a nursery rhyme structure**.

While Smith’s volatile attachment to the Church of England is evident in her poetry, **death, her “gentle friend,” is perhaps her most popular subject**. Much of her inspiration came from theology and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. She enjoyed reading Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning and read few contemporary poets in an attempt to keep her voice original and pure. **Her style is unique in its combination of seemingly prosaic statements, a variety of voices, playful meter, and a deep sense of irony**. Smith was officially recognized with the Chomondeley Award for Poetry in 1966 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969.

Smith died of a brain tumour on 7 March 1971. Her last collection, *Scorpion and other Poems* was published posthumously in 1972, and *Collected Poems* followed in 1975. Three novels were republished and there was a successful play based on her life, *Stevie*, written by Hugh Whitemore. It was filmed in 1978 by Robert Enders and starred Glenda Jackson and Mona Washbourne.

## Historical & Cultural Context

Stevie Smith was an English outsider of the literary world of her time, the period that went from the 1930s to the 1960s. In fact, neither did she belong to any literary movement nor did she follow other poets’ vision of poetry.

## Bibliography

### Novels

* *Novel on Yellow Paper* (Cape, 1936)
* *Over the Frontier* (Cape 1938)
* *The Holiday* (Chapman and Hall, 1949)

### Poetry collections

* *A Good Time Was Had By All* (Cape, 1937)
* *Tender Only to One* (Cape, 1938)
* *Mother, What Is Man?* (Cape, 1942)
* *Alone in the Woods* (Cape, 1947)
* *Harold's Leap* (Cape, 1950)
* *Not Waving but Drowning* (Deutsch, 1957)
* *Selected Poems* (Longmans, 1962) includes 17 previously unpublished poems
* *The Frog Prince* (Longmans, 1966) includes 69 previously unpublished poems
* *The Best Beast* (Longmans, 1969)
* *Two in One* (Longmans, 1971) reprint of *Selected Poems* and *The Frog Prince*
* *Scorpion and Other Poems* (Longmans, 1972)
* *Collected Poems* (Allen Lane, 1975)
* *Selected Poems* (Penguin, 1978)
* *New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith* (New Directions, 1988)
* *Come on Come Back* 1972
* *The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith* (Faber and Faber, 2015)
* *All the Poems of Stevie Smith* (New Directions, 2016)

### Literary Style

Stevie Smith was an English **outsider of the literary world of her time**, the period that went from the 1930s to the 1960s. In fact, neither did she belong to any literary movement nor did she follow other poets’ vision of poetry. In her personal style, **she illustrated her poems and gave them a nursery rhyme-like cadence which created some innocent atmosphere**. However, the **topics were sometimes shocking for the intensity, sense of humour and detachment they were dealt with**.

Apart from death, **common subjects include loneliness, myth and legend, absurd vignettes, usually drawn from middle-class British life, war, human cruelty and religion**. Though her poems were remarkably consistent in tone and quality throughout her life, their subject matter changed over time, with less of the outrageous wit of her youth and more reflection on suffering, faith and the end of life. **Her best-known poem is "Not Waving but Drowning"**. She was awarded the Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1966 and won the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry in 1969.

## Not Waving but Drowning

It was published in 1957 as part of a collection of the same title. The most famous of Smith's poems, it gives an account of a drowned man whose distressed thrashing in the water had been mistaken for waving.

1. Nobody heard him, the dead man,

2. But still he lay moaning:

3. I was much further out than you thought

4. And not waving but drowning.

5. Poor chap, he always loved larking

6. And now he's dead

7. It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

8. They said.

9. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

10. (Still the dead one lay moaning)

11. I was much too far out all my life

12. And not waving but drowning.

### Analysis

 **Enjambment:** | “It must have been too coldfor him his heart gave way,/They say” (9-10)

* Simple Diction
* Illustrations that add meaning to the poem
* Different voices
* Irony
* Treatment of the subject (miscommunication) at a metaphorical level.

The poem's personal significance has been the topic of several pieces of literary criticism because Smith was treated for psychological problems.

#### Form

As with most of Stevie Smith's poetry, "Not Waving but Drowning" **masks complex and dark subject matter with an apparently simplistic form**. The poem consists of **twelve lines divided equally into three four-line stanzas** (quatrains), a common and recognizable stanza form. This apparent mismatch between the subject—miscommunication and death—and form actually helps establish the poem's main theme. That is, the easy, clear form seems almost *wrong* for what is being discussed. The poem's form thus reflects the poem's thematic treatment of communication and misunderstanding, as it opens the poem *itself* up to being oversimplified and misunderstood.

It's also notable the way that the lines 4 and 12 are exactly the same—and that they also repeat the title: And not waving but drowning. This repetition gives the poem a kind of circular, inescapable logic—as though the reader is also trapped inside the dead man's predicament.

#### Meter

The meter in "Not Waving but Drowning" is mixed, never quite settling into a regular rhythm. It can thus be thought of as **free verse**, with the lack of strict meter reflecting the poem's conversational, casual tone—**a tone that is distinctly at odds with the dark subject matter at hand**.

The poem thus plays with a tension between the breezy sound of light verse (e.g., the kind used by Lewis Carrol and Edward Lear) while also disrupting that sense of flow in a few key moments. Generally speaking, most metrical feet in the poem are either **iambic** (da-**DUM**) or **anapestic** (da-da-**DUM**).

Both types of feet play an important role in the poem. Take the mostly anapaestic speech from the dead man in lines 3 and 4:

And not WAV- | ing but DROWN- | ing.

In terms of iambs, line 7 is probably the most significant example (quoted with line 8):

#### Rhyme Scheme

"Not Waving but Drowning" roughly follows the rhyme scheme of a **ballad** stanza (ABCB). This gives the poem a playful sound that works in tension with the serious and dark subject matter. The way that the rhymes chime together is, in itself, a kind of "larking"—of playing around in a carefree manner. This love of larking, of course, is something that the dead man denies—he feels he was misunderstood all his life, and is even misunderstood still in death.

Take the first stanza:

...man, **A**

...moaning: **B**

...thought **C**

... drowning. **B**

"Moaning" and "drowning" are not full rhymes, of course, but the way they appear in stanza 1 and stanza 3 lends them extra emphasis. This helps heighten the bleakness of the poem, putting weight on the word "drowning" especially. The "dead" and "said" rhyme in the second stanza is extremely simple, which helps make the man's deadness all-the-more matter of fact.

#### Summary

The poem opens up with the phrase “nobody heard him”. The dead man drowned because his waving was misunderstood as a harmless greeting instead of a plea for help. Paradoxically, the dead man lays moaning trying to explain that he was much further out than they thought and that he was not waving but drowning. Of course, nobody hears the dead man because it’s too late. This paradox indicates the metaphorical management of the meaning.

In the second stanza, the perspective suddenly switches to those who have known the old man commenting on his tendency to make jokes, and that it was a part of the reason nobody took him seriously, or even his joking (“larking”) for far too long caused his heart to give out. The message from this stanza is clear: joking too much, never expressing oneself in a serious manner will make others never take one seriously, even when one is in serious need for help.

The dead man moans yet again in the final stanza. He was always too cold, meaning that he was always in a dire state (depression) and needed help. He was too far out his entire life, indicating that he was always on the brink of death. The man was always drowning and not waving, meaning that he tried to reach, seek help but was never understood. This poem explores a much deeper meaning conveyed with the image of a drowning man. Indications of themes of depression, feeling misunderstood and even suicide are present in the poem.

#### Symbols

* **Drowning:**

The man drowning is **a symbol of him being consumed by the struggles in his life**. At the end of the poem, it is revealed that the fact the man drowned **represents his struggles with his mental health, which ultimately went unheard.**

* **Waving:**

The man's waving **symbolizes the wrong prespective of a person and the misunderstanding of a person´s feelings and and emotion from a superficial assamption of his personality.** The waving is **an attempt at communication**, which didn't go according to plan; although the man was asking for help, it was interpreted as a joke.

* **The death of the man:**

The death of the man ultimately represents the fact he has succumbed to his struggles and the fact that the people around him **failed to help him, as an irremediable consequence.** This symbolizes how important it is to listen to people and try to understand how they are feeling.

* **"Too far out"**

At the end of the poem, the man is described as being "too far out," for his whole life. The fact he was "too far out" **symbolizes the person´s severe and permanent sorrow.**

#### Theme

**Failed Communication:**

The misunderstanding of the man's cry for help represents the fact that people often misunderstand each other in daily life. This can ultimately have disastrous consequences, which is represented by the man drowning.

## Intro Paragraph

Written by the British poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971), “Not Waving but Drowning” was published in 1957 and became one of the author’s most notable works composed in the latter part of her career. Smith was a distinctive poet whose works discuss serious topics such as death, loneliness, and faith using mainly simple diction and illustrations that add up to their meaning.  Consisting of twelve lines, “Not Waving but Drowning” describes a dead man who drowned after his call for help was mistaken for waving by distant onlookers.  Uncovered by this literal recollection of an event, a deeper and figurative subject prevailing in the poem is the miscommunication between individuals which Smith very well explores by means of a metaphorical management of the subject as well as a recurrent switch of speakers.

The middle of the twentieth century was marked by a lingering sensation of economic, political, and social instability in most of the western world. The Second World War (1939-19445) left a footprint of horror and meant the demise of millions of civilians, both in and outside the battlefield. In the midst of chaos, writers attempted to portray their shattered reality into its pieces. This was the case of Stevie Smith (1902-1971), a skilled English poet whose works often explored themes related to the loneliness and suffering present both in society itself and in her own personal experiences. Although not part of the current itself, Smith was certainly influenced by the ideals of The Movement, based on the celebration of traditional poetry and the rejection of both the chaos of Modernism and the idealization of Neo-Romantics. One of Smith’s most prominent pieces is her 1957 poem "Not Waving but Drowning" ("Not Waving..." from now onwards), a symbolic, sorrowful poem that depicts the death of an isolated individual and the apathetic reaction of their community before such harrowing event. "Not Waving..." makes use of harsh irony and vivid imagery to portray the miscommunication present in a shattered society in which even the most evident cry for help can pass by completely unnoticed.

### MLA citation

Smith, Stevie. “Not Waving but Drowning.” 1957. *Stevie Smith -poems-*, Poem Hunter, 2004, pp. 25.