Stevie Smith's 'Not Waving but Drowning' - Asides (XIII)

Whilst dozing off last week, I found myself listening to Radio 3's late night Free Thinking which featured an interesting discussion about the poetry of Stevie Smith. I made a little note to revisit her verse in the morning, but, after a curious exchange between the host Laurence Scott and guest Dr. Noreen Masud, I found myself immediately reaching for Smith's most famous poem 'Not Waving but Drowning'. Scott and Masud were drawing our attention to the little sketch that Smith insisted on placing beside that poem - something that she did with much of her work - and were expressing surprise that rather than it depicting a distressed, drowning male, what we encountered was an androgynous figure, waist high in water, and 'smiling'. Their contention seemed to be that the doodle didn't match the verse. Judge for yourself.  

    

I've deliberately led with the doodle. Like the poem, it is just perfect. In lines that deal with a disconnection between our inner lives and what other people might see, the figure's half-smile - it's as unreadable as the Mona Lisa's - is apt. It's also an image that perfectly captures the poem's use of that wonderfully English gerund 'larking'. Indeed, Scott and Masud's puzzled and questioning reaction neatly illustrates the poem's point. What we see is not all that there is. 

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 way,   
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.  

Of course, it's just one ambiguity in this short and deceptively simple poem - for a start 'dead men don't moan' is a delightfully chilling observation. That's what Smith excelled at though - and the episode of Free Thinking covered this admirably: poems that seem initially innocuous and straightforward, which then slip their moorings and leave you all at sea wondering exactly just how far out you really are.