Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Not Waving but Drowning

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 away,

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.

                        —Stevie Smith

            Stevie Smith was born in 1902 in Yorkshire, England. Her mother died when Smith was a teenager so Smith and her sister lived with an aunt; the aunt became an important figure in Smith’s life. Smith attended North London Collegiate School for Girls and went on to be a secretary. Smith started writing poetry in her twenties and has had eleven published poems; many of her poems have the evident topic of death. She drew some of the influence for her poems from fairytales and theology; he poems take a slightly nursery rhyme structure to them in their repetition and flow. Smith died in 1971 of a brain tumor.

            According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of “larking” has to deal with a person wandering or simply observing his or her surroundings. I looked up this word because now that I know its meaning, it’s easy to maybe see why the man has drowned because he liked to wander and it got him into danger.

            The first stanza is retrospective of the speaker watching his friend drowning and being unable to do anything about it. The second stanza, to me, feels as though it lacks sympathy because the speaker just claims that the friend is dead, with no emotion, almost like it never happened. The last stanza is introspective because it mentions “being too far out all my life” and this seems to me to be a reflection on the speaker’s lack of connection in his or her own life. This then led me to think that the speaker may not be just a person/friend watching someone drown, but in fact, watching him drown. The speaker seems to have lost touch with his life and can’t find a way to get reconnected and instead has given up hope and watched himself struggle. This poem reminds me that even though we all will feel like we are losing touch at one point or another in our lives, we have two options – drown or take the risk and save ourselves.

What the mirror said by Lucille Clifton

What the mirror said

listen,

you a wonder.

you a city

of a woman.

you got a geography

of your own.

listen,

somebody need a map

to understand you.

somebody need directions

to move around you.  

listen,

woman,

you not a noplace

anonymous

girl;

mister with his hands on you

he got his hands on

some

damn

body!

            —Lucille Clifton

            Lucille Clifton is an African-American woman born in New York in 1936; her ancestry line traces back to West African Kingdom of Dahomey, I thought the background and ethnicity of Lucille Clifton made a lot of sense when reading this poem because her diction is very much typical of African-Americans.

            I like this poem because it makes me imagine looking in a mirror and having my reflection telling me that I’m beautiful and boosting my self-confidence. The theme of this poem is about boosting self-confidence in girls and women and teaching us to love ourselves by having the mirror be telling the woman that she is complex and wonderful. There’s also the message that no one truly knows  who we are inside; we aren’t simple people as much as others may try to make us believe we are; there’s so much to each and every one of us to explore – both for ourselves and the rest of the world to discover about us.

            This poem, to me, has a sort of sassy tone to it at the end when it says “mister with his hands on you he got his hands on some damn body!” but the entire poem seems to have an introspective and positive tone to it. In the afterthoughts of this poem, the reader should realize that true beauty comes from within as well as the outside appearance.

             In an age of such mixed and strict expectations of what women should look like and act, this poem does a very good job of encouraging women to think better of themselves. This is a good poem for young girls to read and understand.

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying-

He had always taken funerals in stride-

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were “sorry for my trouble,”

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry, tearless sighs.

At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

-Seamus Heaney

            When I first read the title of this poem, “Mid-Term Break,” I thought that this poem was going to be funny or relatable to me because I can remember the times during winter break going sledding, drinking hot chocolate, and watching movies. However, this was very much not the case.

            This poem is very impactful because it was vastly different than my initial thoughts of this poem and it really struck a heartstring with me. This poem is about a four year old brother being hit and killed by a car while the older sister was away at college. What makes this poem so impactful and tear-jerking is that it is about the loss of innocence and youth vanquishing at such a promising time in the boy’s life.

            The structure of this poem helps the story of death to flow; from the harrowing journey home after finding out the news to finally seeing the body of her little brother. The tone is very somber and maybe a little distant but still captures the emotions needed to tackle the difficult and tragic subject of accidental childhood death. The poem also has a lot of imagery about the awkward and difficult moments of funerals and gatherings after a loved one dies.

            I liked this poem because it caught me off guard from what I had predicted the poem would be about; although it was sad, this poem really memorable to me.  

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

 into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this:  the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things: 

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let go,

to let go.

—Mary Oliver

            This poem brought on a lot of imagery for me while I was reading it. The first four stanza, on a funny note, reminded me of playing golf because some days, the trees seem to take on a life of their own and jump out of their spot in order of impede my next shot or make my ball ricochet back towards me. A more serious image I got while reading this poem was of walking through a forest in the fall, watching the sky be filled with falling leaves, crunching the fallen leaves on the ground, and hearing the calm and serenity of the nature around.

            However, the fifth through seventh stanzas had a change of imagery to one of blackened trees and desolate space. This shift brings to mind the fictional phoenix bird that will burst into flames, only to be reborn from the ashes. The forest will regrow and blossom into a beautiful serenity again with the changing and rebirth of the seasons; much like in life, things are always changing from good to bad and bad to good with the passing of time.

            In the last stanzas are my favorite lines of the poem: the three things we must be able to do to live in this world. “…to love what is mortal,” because nothing lasts forever and we must cherish what we have before it shall perish; “…to hold it against your bones knowing your life depends on it,” because YOLO and because when we know our lives depend on something, we understand and appreciate the true value of it; and lastly, “…when the time comes to let it go, to let it go,” when I first read this line, I thought “to let it go” was repeated for emphasis but as I reread that line, I discovered that it was phrased differently than I had originally thought and it was really impactful. It is not saying that when the time comes, to let it go, it’s saying that when the time comes to let something go, to let it go; this means to me that we let it go when we need to let it go because it is our own decision, not time’s or society’s decision. I’m not absolutely certain what the “it” is in this poem but I like to think that the “it” is death (life) and/or something we hold near and dear to our hearts.

            Overall, this poem had a tone of acceptance and serenity; the purpose would probably be to see the beauty in life and I think this poem executes that very well.