Let her Go

Dr. Asmaa Khalaf Madlool

          How beautiful it is for our tastes to probe in untrodden  spots that may  be hidden to others. Supporting this human  writing can gain a  perfectness by gathering our differences. Today, I am captivated by a poet who in spite of being  sarcastic and humorous, has  untold pain and grief that spread between and behind the lines of her poems. Her pain`s age is as  large as humanity. Her  laughter and humorous style  fail to hide its flow. It is the contemporary British poet Stevia Smith (1902-1971). Her talent attracts the attention of great poets like Seamus Heaney  Who described her  in his ''A Memorable Voice: Stevie Smith'' (Heaney 211). And Nash who  wrote about her in his in his ''Who, and What is Stevia Smith''( Nash 1964).                                                                                            

             I was drawn to her life before entering her kingdom of creativity. As a child, She tastes the pain of her mother`s death in her early childhood  and the escape of her father in endless travel. Destiny usually does not close all doors, it can leave  an open door or even a half opened one.  Her aunt whom Stevia referred to as the  'noble' in her poetry, embraces Stevia and her sister for their last day in our world. I  come out in difficulty from the kingdom of  her life  to step into the kingdom of her creativity in which she translates her delicate feelings into poetic words. Despite my reservations about some of her views, I  find  a crystal  creativity and a literary  daring that go beyond her talent as a poet to the invention of  new vocabulary in her poetry. She deserves Calvin Bedient `s depiction of   her as ''fearless'' (Bedient  167).                                                                                                                              

      I want to share with you her poem "Let him Go", in which she reveals what she hided previously. Stevie begins her poem with a ruthless Roman emperor wandering among his cells of prison, not inspecting, but enjoying the suffering of his victims.  The inhabitants of the dark, narrow dungeons beg  their executioner to grant them death. The emperor's response is, ''Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough '' (Stevie  2015). This   shows that  death has become a reward and should be given to beloved ones. Our poetess, however, shocks her readers by asking her Muse the very request of death to receive the same response that she does  not  yet reach the level of true loved ones to be granted such a gift. As the poet reaches the end  of her journey in this poem, she presents excuses to insist on  getting this reward. If you have the very suspense  as mine to know these excuses, old age that is full with pain, joy and painful illness are the crown of  her excuses. Ultimately she is accepted as a friend to be granted death and hear  the last decision  of  “let her go.”                                                                                                            

     Unintentionally, she fulfills this in her  real life. Out of pain of unrecoverable disease  from which she cannot speak only in gesture.  she draws to her doctor and friends “a ring round the word ‘death'' that is found in a poem   (Stevie  1990   14). She requests her friends, not the cruel emperor, to let her go.  She  departs the world leaving  a long history of creativity and  her words  that remain here to  immortalize her. Let us employ with slight additions what Stevie presented. Though we differ in our perspectives from some of what our poetess finds in death, but we may meet with her  in other poems to state that we are not created for death, but to live and build.  Our poet in her life diverts pain into sincerity and affection for the world that is organized  accurately by the divine power. Though  Death is inevitable, it will be so  different  depending on our previous achievements and what we grow to be reaped by others .                                                                  

References

Bedient, Calvin.  ''Horace and Modernism''  In  Search of Stevie Smith. Edited by Sanford Sternlicht. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991.

  Heaney, Seamus. A Memorable Voice: Stevie Smith. In In Search of Stevie Smith. Edited by Sanford Sternlicht. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1991.

Nash, Ogden. Promotional Card for Stevie Smith. In Selected

              Poems. New York: New Directions,1964.  .  

  Smith,  Stevie. The Collected Poems & Drawings of Stevie Smith. 

                Edited by Will May. London: Faber & Faber. 2015.

Smith, Stevie. Some are More Human than Others: A Sketchbook.                London: Peter Owen,1990.