Not Waving, But Drowning [VINYL]

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Not Waving but Drowning’ is divided into three stanzas, all of which are quatrains rhymed abcb (though the rhyme in the first and third stanzas, on moaning/drowning, is imperfect). The passage that [Poetry] blasts is often in splinters, covered with blood; but she can come out softly. Her jauntiest jingles have a sour tang that I imagine comes from her well-informed mistrust of words; as an employee of one of England’s largest publishers of pulpy “women’s magazines,” she knew how quickly a beautiful image or a bit of wisdom could become a banality.

I must admit that I'd never heard of Smith until reading this site and had recently shied away from 'Not Waving but Drowning' because it just didn't seem to make sense. One reason may be that not only does she belong to no ‘school’—whether real or invented as they usually are—but her work is so completely different from anyone else’s that it is all but impossible to discuss her poems in relation to those of her contemporaries. The hugely anticipated second full length album from Loyle Carner, following on from his fantastic debut which made our top ten records of 2017.He succinctly captures many of the great, unspoken, cultural and historical paradoxes of multicultural Britain on ‘Looking Back’.

Not Waving, But Drowning’, Loyle’s new album, gives yet more evidence – as if it were needed – of his razor-sharp flow and his unique storytelling ability. During decades of train rides and vigils at her desk, Smith absorbed the rhythms of workday jargon, of newspaper ads, of water cooler chitchat, and set it loose on her own tasks.

Recorded at Hive Mind Studios in Brooklyn, NY, with the help of producer/arrangers Mike Buckley and Vincent Chiarito (both members of Charles Bradley's Extraordinaires) and crack team of a-list musicians, his upcoming album blends heavy arrangements and introspective lyrics with sophistication, leaving the listener in a blissful wash of wonderment. Contributor of poetry to numerous anthologies, including Faber Book of Twentieth-Century Verse, 2nd edition, 1965, and Poetry 1900 to 1965, 1967. Over its 40 years in business, PIAS has grown to be one of the largest independently-owned music groups in the world, carving out its own in-house recorded music division PIAS [Recordings].

Here, a grown child riffs on the conventions of schoolbook Latin to sketch a portrait of her family.

The poem can, of course, be interpreted as an analogy for more philosophical human struggles: we are often ‘drowning’, or struggling, under the weight of cares, worries, anxieties, or stress, but people may assume we are all right, interpreting our metaphorical cries for help as something more upbeat than they actually are. Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith, edited by Jack Barbera and William McBrien, Virago, 1981, Farrar, Straus, 1982.

His biological father, a black man who he knows, but knows very little of, and his step father, a poet and musician who happens to be a white man but died a sudden unexpected death from epilepsy (SUDEP). The album opens with ‘Dear Jean’, a letter to his mother in which he’s telling her that he has found the love of his life, “a woman from the skies”, and he’s moving out. His full length debut on Daptone Records is equal parts raw feeling and elegance and exudes confidence and charm. I guess I’d argue that it’s prissiness on our part when we sum up a “minor” poet like Smith as mannered, precious, or quirky—not that those terms aren’t useful.

The first two lines are spoken by some impersonal narrator; the last two lines by the dead man himself. Nothing can be done, so our witness is essentially forensic—until the dead man’s voice floats up from the deep. Contributor of poems and reviews to Observer, Times Literary Supplement, Listener, New Yorker, Nation, and other periodicals. Have students think-pair-share a time when things went wrong because their words or gestures were misunderstood by others.