Stevie: A Poet Like No Other
Hermione Lee considers Stevie Smith, who many of us know from Glenda Jackson‘s performance in the 1978 movie “Stevie.” Lee writes: “More than with most poets, when people write and talk about Stevie Smith (1902–1971), they try to nail her down with comparisons. She is a female William Blake, an Emily Dickinson of the English suburbs, a mixture of Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, and the Brothers Grimm. Her reading style, which became legendary, with her cropped hair, baleful expression, little-girl dresses, and singsong lugubrious chanting voice, was described as a cross between Mary Poppins and Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III. Seamus Heaney called it a combination of Gretel and the witch. He also compared her to “two Lears,†“the old King come to knowledge and gentleness through suffering, and the old comic poet Edward veering off into nonsense.â€
