I’ve come across Stevie Smith’s poem “Not Waving but Drowning” in the Oxford English Verse book and was reminded at once what it is I like exactly in a poem. Of course, most of it, that thing which attracts me to a poem in the first place, is an unspeakable thing, which makes the celebration of a poem a rereading and a re-rereading, not a dissection or unnatural preservation (A modern retelling!). I’ve come to realize that most to all beautiful things have the potential to look ugly once cut open, though that’s not to say a poem, or any piece of art, cannot have a deeper, more beautiful meaning underneath its surface. What I mean is that going over every word, relating the poem to some lame news-cycle story, or inserting it into one’s political beliefs turns a poem into something which it is not.
But I’ve come to talk about the powers of poetry, its beauty and holistic restorational qualities. Isn’t there something so healing about reading a relatable poem? This is why we read them. Going back to Ms. Smith’s poem, what I enjoy from it is its relatability. At what point in our lives have we not been mistakenly identified as looking happy and healthy when the reality is the opposite? Just because we like to play and smile doesn’t mean there isn’t some tremendous, almost crippling anxiety or depression or unspecified angst, which are characteristics one despises in another person when it’s so outwardly expressed. What a paradox of the human condition, how it is best to hide when encouraged to come out. It’s nice to know, God it’s nice to know, how not alone we are in this world.
This all comes back to a grand impression a poem gives the reader. Of course its specific actions and words contribute to that overall grand impression, but to give them, or more horrendously, to relate one or two words to a poem’s greatness is to love a cloud for its molecules and a rainbow for its orange. In Smith’s poem I love its wholeness. If one stanza were cut or one word out of place the poem would, like the character, drown. If one thing is out of place this poem turns sentimental. It has all the possibilities of being a middle school diary entry. But all the words add up, and it becomes this thing which is universal and true.
If I sound vague, I apologize. But summing up a poem’s greatness is a vague thing, the specific becomes abstract. Going too far with it, that is the dissection of a poem, does run the risk of ruining its beauty and wholeness. To compartmentalize a poem, that is to break it down by its parts, its stanzas and lines and words, destroys its magic. What I like in a poem is the poem itself. What makes a poem likeable and good is its relation to the reader. For me, and I suspect for a whole lot of others, it is honesty, lightheartedness, a general love for people, specificity in parts and summation in others, perspicacity, and that other unknown thing which binds all great poems together. Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving but Drowning” fulfills these things and also fulfills parts of myself I don’t know about. For that, it is worth reading and rereading and more.
Alan R Massey 