All the Poems of Stevie Smith

by Stevie Smith, Will May (Editor)

Overview

The essential edition of one of modern poetry’s most distinctive voices
Stevie Smith is among the most popular British poets of the twentieth century. Her poem “Not Waving but Drowning” has been widely anthologized,and her life was celebrated in the classic 1978 movie Stevie. This new and updated edition of Stevie Smith’s collected poems includes hundreds of works from her thirty-five-year career. The Smith scholar Will May collects poems and illustrations from published volumes, provides fascinating details about their provenance, and describes the various versions Smith presented. Satirical, mischievous, teasing, disarming, Smith’s poems take readers from comedy to tragedy and back again, while her line drawings are by turns unsettling and beguiling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811223805
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	02/04/2016
Pages:	848
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Stevie Smith (1902-1971) was the author of three novels and nine poetry volumes and lived almost her whole life in northern London. She was officially recognized with the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry in 1966 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 1969.

Will May is author of Stevie Smith and Authorship (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Editorial Reviews

…there is something compelling, almost bewitching about Smith's oddball poems and the array of hastily sketched queens, angels, forlorn girls, sad harpists, trapeze swingers and testy-looking felines that whirl around them like spirits halfway through the process of being invoked. There is a way in which the whole of her poetry attains a potency that is dependent on, and yet in no way resembles, its many, frequently trivial parts—like a scattering of broken, brightly colored tiles suddenly snapping into focus as a mosaic. This is strikingly demonstrated by All the Poems of Stevie Smith…which is the most complete version thus far of Smith's large oeuvre… She is a great poet because almost half a century after her death, her poems are more startling and bizarre than those of many poets who deliberately set out, as one suspects Smith never did, to be startling and bizarre. She is a great poet whether or not she fits into the stories we like to tell about poets and their greatness.

The New York Times Book Review - David Orr

My senses sharpen at the words of Stevie Smith.

Morrissey

I am a desperate Stevie Smith addict.

Sylvia Plath

There is variety and inventiveness, much humor and understanding and a constant poignancy. Her gift was to create a peculiar emotional weather between the words, a sense of pity for what is infringed and unfulfilled. Death, waste, loneliness, cruelty, the maimed, the stupid, the innocent, the trusting—her concerns were central ones, her compassion genuine and her vision almost tragic.

Seamus Heaney

Those crazy about this wonderful and strange poet will obviously want Will May's splendid All the Poems”

Michael Dirda - The Washington Post

A poet who deserves a place, among her follow modernists, as one of the best, silly-serious, funny-sad, mock mock-heroic poets of our time.

Cathrin Bürger

Smith’s great gift is to sit on our shoulder like a feisty bird that’s traveled a long distance, has been half starved on the way, and hopes your map will be a different from hers.

Barbara Berman - The Rumpus

That sense of the uncanny, theunheimlichor the peculiar, the grip of childhood terrors, the chance—perhaps our greatest fear—of never being known, the intimacy of wickedness, they are all here, in these poems.”

Negima + Negima (7Pc) / (Anam Sub)

A rare bird, a Maltese falcon. A more individual talent than Stevie Smith’s you don’t get.

Clive James - The New Yorker

She is a great poet because almost half a century after her death, her poems are more startling and bizarre than those of many poets who deliberately set out, as one suspects Smith never did, to be startling and bizarre.

Wolfgang Vogler

Now, forty-five years after her death, bound inside this large annotated collection, [Smith] can be celebrated as a major English poet of the twentieth century. She is a writer of astonishing skill, range, comedy, and depth of feeling; she is inimitable, strange, and utterly original.

Ef (4Pc) / (Stbk Anam Sub)

A landmark volume brimming with wit, surprises, sardonic pleasures, and abiding compassion.

Donna Seaman - Booklist (starred review)

05/01/2016
"I like to sit and pry and peer/ And poke and watch the light of fear/ Shine in your eyes…." Nearly forgotten, mostly uncelebrated, Smith's poems aren't easy to categorize. Is she feminist, humorist, or a light versifier? She draws subjects often from myth and traditional fairy tales. Acerbic and witty, many poems are dark and sometimes humorous tales of death. "My true love breathed her latest breath/ And I have closed her eyes in death/ …She was not like other girls—rather diffident,/ And that is how we had an accident." Characterized by simple diction, Smith's poems are sometimes set to music—hymns and traditional songs. Unlike previous collections, this volume offers all her published works. Their numbers are considerable, but reading is enhanced by the comprehensive introduction, as well as a biographical chronology and multiple indexes. Poems are arranged in the order of publication. Included are Smith's whimsical drawings, which enhance the spirit of playfulness, her contradictions, and her original style. Smith skewers religion, domesticity and other poets equally. "Let all the poets be gathered together in classes/ And let prizes be given to them by the Prize Asses." VERDICT This volume should place Smith's work where it belongs, solidly in the contemporary canon. It is an important addition to modern poetry collections.—Karla Huston, Appleton, WI

Library Journal