Facade and other poems, 1920-1935;

by Edith Sitwell

Book by Sitwell, Dame Edith

Genres: Poetry, British Literature

212 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1950

About the author

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell, DBE, was a British poet and critic.

Reviews

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a big poetry reader but after randomly finding this, some googling of Sitwell made me know I should give the work of this very interesting person a try. Some of the poems do nothing for me, but others hypnotize and enchant me.

She, and her family, were famously eccentric, and she published a book "English Eccentrics" in 1933. "A Nest of Tigers" was written about her.

“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.”

A musical performance of "Facade" was created with William Walton in which in 1923 "she recited through a megaphone protruding through a decorated screen" while he conducted the music. It was a scandal. Noel Coward, among others, walked out. (He later wrote a skit "the Swiss Family Whittlebot" about her.)

Online, you can hear her read her wartime poem "Still Falls the Rain", not in this volume. If she sounds like Margaret Thatcher, that is no accident: some believe Thatcher intentionally affected Sitwell's speech.

Some have called her the first "rap artist" -- which is silly, but I understand where that comes from. There is a strong sense of flowing rhythm and beat. Even when the beats and line lengths don't follow a simple pattern, it flows naturally. I instinctively feel where the beats should be and I just automatically speed up and slow down in what feels like natural speech. In "Some Notes on My Own Poetry" she said she was looking for "rhythmical expressions for the heightened speed of our time" and mentions "the changes of speed". This reminds me of the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim which sound so natural when sung, but are set to music that changes time signature frequently, including many "odd" time signatures.

I didn't actually undertand much, but that is OK. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on how much of her poetry actually makes sense. But I greatly enjoyed some poems anyway.

The collection includes Facade, Bucolic Comedies, Gold Coast Customs, Marine, The Sleeping Beauty, and more.

BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE DOLL

OLD
Sir
Faulk,
Tall as a stork,
Before the honeyed fruits of dawn were ripe, would walk,
And stalk with a gun
The reynard-coloured sun,
Among the pheasant-feathered corn the unicorn has torn, forlorn the
Smock-faced sheep
Sit
And
Sleep;
Periwigged as William and Mary, weep . . .
"Sally, Mary, Mattie, what's the matter, why cry?"
The huntsman and the reynard-coloured sun and I sigh;
"Oh, the nursery-maid Meg
With a leg like a peg
Chased the feathered dreams like hens, and when they laid an egg
In the sheepskin
Meadows
Where,
The serene King James would steer,
Horse and hounds, then he
From the shade of a tree
Picked it up as spoil to boil for nursery tea," said the mourners. In the
Corn, towers strain,
Feathered tall as a crane,
And whistling down the feathered rain, old Noah goes again --
An old dull mome
With a head like a pome,
Seeing the world as a bare egg,
Laid by the feathered air; Meg
Would beg three of these
For the nursery teas
Of Japhet, Shem, and Ham; she gave it
Underneath the trees,
Where the boiling
Water
Hissed,
Like the goose-king's feathered daughter -- kissed,
Pot and pan and copper kettle
Put upon their proper mettle,
Lest the Flood -- the Flood -- the Flood begin again through these!

FACADE: 2. THE BAT

CASTELLATED, tall
From battlements fall
Shades on heroic
Lonely grass,
Where the moonlight's echoes die and pass.
Near the rustic boorish,
Fustian Moorish,
Castle wall of the ultimate Shade,
With his cloak castellated as that wall, afraid,
The mountebank doctor,
The old stage quack,
Where decoy duck dust
Began to clack,
Watched Heliogabalusene the Bat
In his furred cloak hang head down from the flat
Wall, cling to what is convenient,
Lenient.
"If you hang upside down with squeaking shrill,
You will see dust, lust, and the will to kill,
And life is a matter of which way falls
Your tufted turreted Shade near these walls.
For muttering guttering shadow will plan
If you're ruined wall, or pygmy man,"
Said Heliogabalusene, "or a pig,
Or the empty Caesar in tall periwig."
And the mountebank doctor,
The old stage quack,
Spread out a black membraned wing of his cloak
And his shuffling footsteps seem to choke,
Near the Castle wall of the ultimate Shade
Where decoy duck dust
Quacks, clacks, afraid.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun to read aloud, but don't hope for any clarity of meaning while doing so. If you can just enjoy the sound play and not mind the obscurity, you'll get the best there is to be gotten out of these poems. It's obvious Sitwell could have done more than play with sounds and build up vague impressions of meaning, which makes me willing to try other collections of her work to see if she ever moved beyond this sort of thing while retaining her virtuosity.