Stevie Smith

A Man I Am

pseudonym of FLORENCE MARGARET SMITH, British poet who expressed an original and visionary personality in her work, combining a lively wit with penetrating honesty and an absence of sentiment.

For most of her life Smith lived with an aunt in the same house in Palmers Green, a northern London suburb. After attending school there, she worked, until the early 1950s, as a secretary in the London offices of a magazine publisher. She then lived and worked at home, caring for her elderly aunt who had raised her and who died at age 96 in 1968. Palmers Green and the people there are subjects for some of her poetry.

Stevie Smith was born in Hull in September 1902, the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. She was christened Florence Margaret, but always called Peggy by the family. She acquired the name Stevie as a young woman when she was riding in the park with a friend who said that she reminded him of the jockey, Steve Donaghue.

About the author

Stevie becomes a secretary and gets engaged

Stevie's first novel and collection of poems is publishedAlthough she had been writing regularly for about ten years it was not until 1934 that Stevie submitted some of her poems to a literary agency.

Stevie's first novel and collection of poems is publishedAlthough she had been writing regularly for about ten years it was not until 1934 that Stevie submitted some of her poems to a literary agency.

Stevie's death from a brain tumourIn 1969 another collection of poems, the Best Beast, was published. Her sister, who had been a teacher and was also unmarried, had a heart attack in 1963, and although they were not very compatible Stevie spent quite a lot of time with her following Aunt's death. In 1970 Stevie became ill, noticing that she was often unable to find words, a terrible thing to happen to a poet, and was found to be suffering from a brain tumour. Stevie died in Devon, where her sister lived, in March 1971and was cremated in Torquay crematorium.

About the author (continued)

A poem about the nature of the human condition and our progression through time and history.

Written in a reflective way-looking back-like many of the poems in this collection.

“I was..I did..I could.” We see what humanity experienced through the difficult early years.

It starts badly for us-“I was consumed by so much hate.” The early history of the human race is a tale of violence and death.

The inability to wait characterizes Man’s impulsive and impatient nature.”I ran into the forest wild.” The use if “I” is interesting. The poet identifies with the human race-we are all part of this shared history. None of us is any different.

Summary & Analysis

“my fang” - we are a violent people, or we were so much more so in the early days. … to describe man’s violent nature and the Darwinian struggle for survival. We were little more than animals seems to be the implication. We are associated with the “wolf” in this first stanza.

“I ran wild for centuries”-repetition of the word wild. Also a sense of how long it took us to progress and change.

“the immemorial trees” nature looks on timeless, immutable and uncaring.

“never knew a moments ease” life was hard and tough in those days. In a sense it is a miracle that we developed at all.

“The spring broke in” tone change-we start to change and develop. We grow a conscience. Yet even this causes suffering our “poor heart bled”.

We learn “remorse.” Do we invent God now or turn to him because we know we have sinned? “the primordial curse” is conscience/awareness of wrongdoing. “at last I cried on Him.” Do we need God to help us through what we have done/to help us grow and change? Or do we simply invent a construct God?

God is seen as beautiful though as well as stern-“”before whom angel faces dim.” He is a light to the world the implication seems to be.

It is only through appreciation of what we have been and what we have lived through (“the silt of death”) that our “joy  began.” We know what we are now-humans-fragile/beautiful/deadly. We have grown up-changed and developed.

 In the second stanza, the appeal to God to ‘Take the burden of my sin’ is tempered by ‘remorse’ being described as ‘that primordial curse’. Even in the final stanza, ‘joy’ is found while swimming ‘Upon the silt of death’. It is this final image which is ‘just like a man.’

The persona Smith assumes in this poem seems to be humanity itself and through its jaunty rhythms, repetitions and limited rhymes portrays the ascent of man from ‘hate’ and savagery to ‘remorse’ and ‘joy’, from ‘wolf’ to ‘man’.

The tone of the poem is, though, ambiguous. The horror of tearing ‘the throat’ of a ‘little new born child’ is undercut by the bouncing rhythm and the almost comically casual diction (‘I could not wait for long at any rate’). In the second stanza, the appeal to God to ‘Take the burden of my sin’ is tempered by ‘remorse’ being described as ‘that primordial curse’. Even in the final stanza, ‘joy’ is found while swimming ‘Upon the silt of death’. It is this final image which is ‘just like a man.’

The poem needs careful reading and consideration. How do you respond to the ambiguities of its imagery, language and tone?

Critiques / Comments / Reviews

Form and structure: What is the effect of the varying lengths of lines in this poem? Language devices: What are the effects of the parallel structure of the last line of the first and

last stanzas? Why is parallel structure used only in the first stanza? Imagery: How does the imagery change throughout the poem and why? Why does Smith use imagery of a bleeding heart and other references to

blood and tears? Rhyme: Identify the rhyme scheme and suggest why Smith has used this rhyme

scheme. Themes and ideas: Discuss the ideas of death and sins present in the poem. What is the poets opinion on war? Why, relevance: How does the poem provoke the reader to think about their own 'sins'

and/or regrets?

FLIRTY Questions