Stevie Smith Criticism
Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in 1902, stands as a unique and multifaceted figure in 20th-century English literature. Renowned for her light, comic verse, her body of work encompasses poetry, novels, short stories, and essays. Often employing the structure and tone of nursery rhymes and hymns, Smith's playful language belies profound engagements with themes of religion, suicide, and death, illustrating a duality of frivolity and vulnerability. This is notably explored in Philip Larkin's Frivolous and Vulnerable, where he favorably reviews her Selected Poems.
Smith's literary journey commenced while she was working as a secretary, leading to the publication of her first novel, Novel on Yellow Paper, in 1936, followed by her poetry collection A Good Time Was Had by All in 1937. These early works introduce her existential inquiries and her skepticism towards traditional religious beliefs, as D. J. Enright examines in Did Nobody Teach You?. Her novels, filled with humor yet tinged with despair, often weave semi-autobiographical elements into portrayals of young women navigating London office life, a theme discussed by John Bayley in his examination of her work's melancholic depth.
Smith's oeuvre has elicited varied critical responses over time. Initially praised for her innovative use of sound and rhythm, her later poetry was overlooked until its recent reappraisal. Her unique performances, where she chanted her verses or sang them to familiar tunes, have been highlighted by Seamus Heaney in A Memorable Voice: Stevie Smith. The renewed attention to her distinctive voice is further supported by Calvin Bedient and John Simon, who have noted the importance of her collection Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith (1981).
Recent reissues of her early works and the publication of Me Again have sparked renewed critical interest. Carole Angier and Lisa Mitchell discuss her unique perspective on life and death, highlighting her as an irreplaceable figure in contemporary poetry. Joyce Carol Oates acknowledges the unconventional narrative forms in her novels, while Michael Schmidt emphasizes her revitalization of poetic forms. Stephen Tapscott further explores her balance of whimsical tone with spiritual inquiry, noting the intellectual clarity beneath her seemingly simple language.
Contents
- Principal Works
- Smith, Stevie (Vol. 8)
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Smith, Stevie (Vol. 25)
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Stevie Smith
(summary)
In the following essay, Calvin Bedient explores the complex and multifaceted poetry of Stevie Smith, highlighting her blend of honesty, sardonic humor, and a unique voice that marries classical skepticism with romantic liberation, ultimately portraying Smith as an indispensable figure in contemporary poetry known for her vibrant, unexpected, and truthful expressions.
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Book Reviews: 'The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith'
(summary)
In the following essay, Stephen Tapscott explores how Stevie Smith's childlike forms and rhythms in her poetry belie a deeper, more penetrating engagement with adult themes, while highlighting her ability to balance whimsical tone with uncompromising honesty and spiritual inquiry, akin to poets like Blake and Dickinson.
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Why Stevie Smith Matters
(summary)
In the following essay, Mark Storey argues that Stevie Smith's poetry is characterized by a deliberate simplicity and carelessness that paradoxically demonstrate her craftsmanship, drawing parallels with poets like John Clare and William Blake, and highlighting her unique ability to balance deep pessimism with a distinctive, lyrical exploration of themes such as death and despair.
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Stevie Smith
(summary)
In the following essay, Michael Schmidt argues that Stevie Smith's poetry revitalizes traditional poetic forms through her innovative use of rhythm, fanciful vision, and humor, drawing from a variety of Victorian and American literary and musical influences while maintaining a unique voice characterized by wit and ethical engagement.
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The Must of the Daily Dolours
(summary)
In the following essay, John Bayley critiques the overwhelming presence and melancholic depth in Stevie Smith's poetry, illustrating her unique voice through themes of isolation, dispossession, and emotional fatigue while highlighting the subtle beauty and variability in the effectiveness of her works.
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Nuts on Death
(summary)
In the following essay, Victoria Glendinning examines Stevie Smith's uncollected writings, highlighting her ironic tone, religious and existential themes, and the lively, affectionate nature of her letters, suggesting her work reflects a continuous negotiation between life and death, and a unique personal style comparable to that of Queen Victoria.
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Jerusalem
(summary)
In the following essay, Penelope Fitzgerald examines Stevie Smith's complex persona, her fascination with death, and her ability to create myths, arguing that Smith's eccentricity and sincerity are reflected in her seemingly ingenuous fiction, lyricism, and distinctive poetry which resonate with themes of loneliness and deep interior peace.
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English Miscellaneous Writings: 'Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith'
(summary)
In the following essay, Carole Angier discusses Stevie Smith's Me Again as a collection that reveals her distinctive wit and loneliness through stories, essays, and uncollected poems, highlighting her unique perspective on life and death and her characteristic childlike detachment.
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Decades of Poetry in Anticipation of Death
(summary)
In the following essay, Lisa Mitchell offers a critical analysis of "Me Again," a posthumous collection of Stevie Smith's work, highlighting Smith's tendency to blend literary forms, her preoccupation with Christianity and death, and her distinctive style, while questioning the collection's ability to fully address the depth of Smith's literary legacy.
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A Sort of Innocence: 'Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith'
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In the following essay, Quentin Crisp explores the dual nature of Stevie Smith's uncollected writings, highlighting the contrast between her deliberate "childish" style and her sharp, evocative ideas, ultimately recommending the work for its blend of sweetness and merciless insight despite moments of stylistic ineptitude.
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A Child with a Cold, Cold Eye
(summary)
In the following essay, Joyce Carol Oates examines the posthumous acclaim for Stevie Smith, emphasizing the distinctive eccentricity of her voice in both novels and poetry, while acknowledging the novels' lack of traditional narrative and characterization, contrasting with the celebrated, skillfully constrained form of her poetic works.
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Stevie Smith
(summary)
- Smith, Stevie (Vol. 3)
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Smith, Stevie
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Frivolous and Vulnerable
(summary)
A major poet of the post-World War II era, Larkin was also a novelist and critic. In the following essay, he favorably reviews Selected Poems.
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Did Nobody Teach You?
(summary)
In the essay below, he discusses the 'unromantic' characteristics of Smith's poetry.
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Stevie Smith
(summary)
In the following essay, Bedient provides an overview of Smith's poetry, highlighting her wonderfully various mind and the diverse themes and attitudes in her work. He notes her intelligence and honesty, her sardonic nature, and the impact of her father's abandonment on her character and writing.
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A Memorable Voice: Stevie Smith
(summary)
Heaney praises the 'memorable voice' of Smith's poetry, suggesting that poetry is memorable voice rather than just memorable speech. He reflects on the unique performance quality of Smith's work, combining elements of vulnerability and capability, and describes her delivery as artfully off-key, evoking a range of auditory experiences.
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Delivered for a Time from Silence
(summary)
Below, Helmling commends the stylistic and thematic diversity of Collected Poems.
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The Poems of Stevie Smith
(summary)
In the following positive review, Simon praises the scope and profundity of the verse in Collected Poems.
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Stevie Smith and the Gleeful Macabre
(summary)
Florence Margaret Smith, who retained her nickname Stevie throughout her adulthood and published under its androgynous rubric, reveled in incongruities. Her poetic speakers shift from male to female, conformist to nonconformist, simple to complex, and adult to child; at times, indeed they are both alive and dead. She frequently set her poems to well-known tunes and sang them rather tonelessly to willing listeners, and she often appended sketches whose relationship to the text is problematical. Her syntax is odd, her rhymes unexpected, her numbers idiosyncratic, and as a result her work is nearly always lively and original. Her poems have an immediate appeal, and yet many of them bear considerable re-reading. The frequent incongruities chiefly account for this double effect.
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Daddy, Mummy and Stevie: The Child-Guise in Stevie Smith's Poetry
(summary)
Critics agree that in Stevie Smith's work 'cleverness and innocence … are curiously and winningly combined.' They also agree that she is a difficult writer to peg—she is 'unhousled,' 'unplaceable,' and 'open to every likelihood and perhaps finally partial to none.' Commentators on Smith's poetry fall back on adjectives such as 'sprightly' and variations of the catch-all 'charming.' While they never dare utter 'eccentric old dear,' it seems to be on the tips of their tongues. Like most critics who attempt to deal with Stevie Smith, the anonymous reviewer in TLS (14 July 1972) goes to great lengths to avoid critical judgment of the poet's work.
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An introduction to Stevie Smith: A Selection
(summary)
In the following essay, she offers a thematic and stylistic analysis of Smith's poetry, highlighting the humorous and dignified approach to welcoming Death, and exploring the whimsical, fantastical, and satirical elements of her work.
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Stevie Smith
(summary)
In the following essay, she addresses autobiographical aspects of Smith's poetry.
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Play, Fantasy and Strange Laughter: Stevie Smith's Uncomfortable Poetry
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Stevie Smith's off-key, enigmatically childish poetry has always irritated as much as charmed her critics. It fits no obvious category and, though Smith's popularity as a novelist as well as a poet has continued to grow since her death in 1971, her critical reputation remains ambiguous and unconfirmed. Critics have often shown exasperation with her poetry's refusal to be 'literary', applauding her 'faux naif' style while expressing discomfort with her perceived frivolity. Pumphrey argues that any serious discussion of Smith's work must confront the implications of her use of play and fantasy, rather than simply categorizing her as an amusing anomaly.
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Stevie Smith and the Anxiety of Intimacy
(summary)
In the following essay, he analyzes the defining characteristics of Smith's verse, in particular her "anxiety over intimacy and self-disclosure."
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Stevie Smith's Voices
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Below, Stevenson explores the modes of expression in Smith's verse, maintaining that the "multivoiced character" of many of her poems "arise[s] from her emphasis on contending voices and her echoes of specific literary traditions and texts."
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Frivolous and Vulnerable
(summary)
- Further Reading