Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Vintage (1992), Paperback, 240 pages
Description
Elizabeth Smart's passionate fictional account of her intense love-affair with the poet George Barker, described by Angela Carter as 'Like Madame Bovary blasted by lightening ... A masterpiece'.
User reviews
LibraryThing member stevencudahy
A prose poem of exquisite beauty, a tale of the overwhelming love of an intelligent, articulate woman for a man unworthy of her, a long drawn-out howl in the service of the idea that love can change the world for the better while simultaneously causing grief and mayhem wherever it goes. This is a
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flawless work, eloquent and moving and in some ways profoundly disturbing. Smart's writing is like fire dancing and flickering - beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Although those readers who like the simpleton A-to-B plotting that dominates so much of modern literature will perhaps find nothing here to like this is a hugely impressive achievement. English has such a massive vocabulary and flexibility to it yet there are few writers who take advantage of that to produce something that stretches the language to breaking point in the service of communicating depth and truth of experience. Anyone who loves language, who loves writing, who loves the idea that words on the page can be more than simple fireside tales writ large, should be thanking whatever deity they believe in every day that people like Elizabeth Smart chose to enter the ring and fight hard to put words on the page. This is a classic, and rightly so, and anyone who picks it up and remains unmoved should perhaps consider seeking professional help. Show Less
LibraryThing member John
A marvellous book that I have heard about, but never read until now when I picked it up at the Book and Art Den in Banff; a very good little bookstore with an excellent selection of books, much better than one would expect from such a tourist mecca.
Smart was an interesting, and intriguing person.
That is the bare bones of the story that is told in this little book through a genre called "poetic prose". And it is wonderful. Almost every line is a metaphor, a poetic image, but it works. And in some passages, Smart writes beautifully:
...he whom I have waited so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams, fumbles with the tickets and the bags, and shuffles up to the event which too much anticipation has fingered to shreds.
Absolve me, I prayed, up through the cathedral redwoods, and forgive me if this is sin. But the new moss caressed me and the water over my feet and the ferns approved me with endearments: My darling, my darling, lie down with us now for you also are earth whom nothing but love can sow.
And I lay down on the redwood needles and seemed to flow down the canyon with the thunder and confusion of the stream, in a happiness which, like birth, can afford to ignore the blood and the tearing. For nature has no time for mourning, absorbed by the turning world, and will, no matter what devastation attacks her, fulfil in underground ritual, all her proper prophecy.
Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.
And, one of my favourites, that I should take to heart:
Parents' imaginations build frameworks out of their own hopes and regrets into which children seldom, grow, but instead, contrary as trees, lean sideways out of the architecture, blown by a fatal wind their parents never envisaged.
(Though I might change "regrets" for "hopes")
Smart was an interesting, and intriguing person.
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Born in Ottawa, she moved to England where she fell in love with a poet named George Barker. She did so by reading his poetry, not by meeting him. She struck-up a correspondence, and ended up inviting Barker and his wife to join her in California. She in fact paid for their trip as Barker was penniless. She and Barker began an affair that lasted a lifetime (and four children), much to the disapproval of her family, friends, and the authorities who arrested the two of them for adultery when they tried to drive across the state border (this was in the 1950s). Barker, it seems went back to his wife, for a while, when Smart was pregnant with their first child.That is the bare bones of the story that is told in this little book through a genre called "poetic prose". And it is wonderful. Almost every line is a metaphor, a poetic image, but it works. And in some passages, Smart writes beautifully:
...he whom I have waited so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams, fumbles with the tickets and the bags, and shuffles up to the event which too much anticipation has fingered to shreds.
Absolve me, I prayed, up through the cathedral redwoods, and forgive me if this is sin. But the new moss caressed me and the water over my feet and the ferns approved me with endearments: My darling, my darling, lie down with us now for you also are earth whom nothing but love can sow.
And I lay down on the redwood needles and seemed to flow down the canyon with the thunder and confusion of the stream, in a happiness which, like birth, can afford to ignore the blood and the tearing. For nature has no time for mourning, absorbed by the turning world, and will, no matter what devastation attacks her, fulfil in underground ritual, all her proper prophecy.
Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.
And, one of my favourites, that I should take to heart:
Parents' imaginations build frameworks out of their own hopes and regrets into which children seldom, grow, but instead, contrary as trees, lean sideways out of the architecture, blown by a fatal wind their parents never envisaged.
(Though I might change "regrets" for "hopes")
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LibraryThing member TomSlee
I had missed this book but, in one of those odd coincidences, my son brought it home one day and the next day the Globe and Mail got five literary types to list the top ten Canadian books and this book appeared on three of the lists.
I don't know who is harder on whom: young people on old people or
I don't know who is harder on whom: young people on old people or
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old people on young people. The old think the young are naive and the young think the old don't have a feeling in their heart or a thought in their head. This is a young person's book. It doesn't read like any other 1945 book you'll ever read (or, in fact, like any other book I've read) and for that alone I'm glad I have read it. Raw, melodramatic, devastated and poetic. Show Less
LibraryThing member gypsysmom
Such a beautifully written book! Every page is imbued with the passion Smart felt for her lover, George Barker. Though, since Barker was married and a Catholic, their love would forever be carried out in secret or if not secret then without the approbation of society.
At one point, as detailed in
It would be interesting to know what Barker's wife felt during all this. Initially it seems that Smart was reluctant to consummate the affair because of his marriage. They were all living in a small community in California when the affair started so she must have know what was going on. And from some of the passages about her it seems that she had at least one miscarriage.
In the night she moans with the voice of the stream below my window, searching for the child whose touch she once felt and can never forget: the child who obeyed the laws of life better than she....Her shoulders have always the attitude of grieving, and her thin breasts are pitiful like Virgin Shrines that have been robbed.
So how difficult it must have been for her to see her husband's mistress give him a child.
I must confess I don't think I care for George Barker. Information available on the internet details that he had affairs with other women and at least 7 other children in addition to the 4 Smart eventually had with him. If he had remained true to her I would have felt that the affair was understandable as a grand passion but since he impregnated other women he obviously didn't feel as bound to her as she was to him. 'Twas ever thus.
At one point, as detailed in
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the book, Smart and Barker were actually arrested in Arizona for sharing a bed when they were not married. Smart's mother was mortified by the affair and when this book was published she tried to have it banned in Ottawa. When that didn't work she went out and purchased all the copies she could find and burned them.It would be interesting to know what Barker's wife felt during all this. Initially it seems that Smart was reluctant to consummate the affair because of his marriage. They were all living in a small community in California when the affair started so she must have know what was going on. And from some of the passages about her it seems that she had at least one miscarriage.
In the night she moans with the voice of the stream below my window, searching for the child whose touch she once felt and can never forget: the child who obeyed the laws of life better than she....Her shoulders have always the attitude of grieving, and her thin breasts are pitiful like Virgin Shrines that have been robbed.
So how difficult it must have been for her to see her husband's mistress give him a child.
I must confess I don't think I care for George Barker. Information available on the internet details that he had affairs with other women and at least 7 other children in addition to the 4 Smart eventually had with him. If he had remained true to her I would have felt that the affair was understandable as a grand passion but since he impregnated other women he obviously didn't feel as bound to her as she was to him. 'Twas ever thus.
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LibraryThing member TimFootman
One for the Morrissey fans out there, maybe.
LibraryThing member isabelx
"By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept' is a wonderful book, the story of a love affair told via poetic imagery and metaphors.
'No, my advocates, my angels with the sadist eyes, this is the beginning of my life, or the end. So I lean affirmation across the cafe table, and surrender my fifty
'No, my advocates, my angels with the sadist eyes, this is the beginning of my life, or the end. So I lean affirmation across the cafe table, and surrender my fifty
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years away with an easy smile.' Show Less
LibraryThing member bodachliath
Way back in the early '90s, I came across Ashley Hutchings' album "By Gloucester Docks I sat down and wept", an intensely personal folk rock concept album telling the story of a doomed relationship. This book is referenced not just by the title, but because a few lines of it are quoted at a key
Elizabeth Smart's novella is an impressionistic "prose poem" short of conventional plot but full of striking language - a book more about feeling than action, but something of a gem nonetheless
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point in the story. Hutchings' sleeve note says "those who have not read it are recommended to as soon as possible". It took me more than 20 yeasr, but when I saw the book, I was curious enough to buy it. Elizabeth Smart's novella is an impressionistic "prose poem" short of conventional plot but full of striking language - a book more about feeling than action, but something of a gem nonetheless
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LibraryThing member missizicks
Smart's book is wonderful. If you have even a gramme of passion in you, read it and ride the floodwaters with her.
LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
Over a year to read this slim book. She lays her heart so bare that I could only read this in moments of emotional calm. A tribute to the writing is that I could leave it by the bedside for months and then pick up and read on as if I had laid it down only the night before.
Have 'read' it a second
Have 'read' it a second
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time as an audio book. Show Less
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
This writing just intoxicates me. Makes me feel like I finally understand how to be less of a dick to women even when they're also being kind of a dick. (It's not like a manual--it's just Elizabeth Smart brings you into her world and you can't be a dick to someone without knowing it once you've
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been in their world). Show Less
LibraryThing member b.masonjudy
This is a devastating novel/novella/prose poem. I can't, in good conscience, give it a star rating. I enjoy parts of it, others I didn't get at all, but Smart writes about love in all its beauty and terror and it is a hard book but one worthy of your attention. That is all.
LibraryThing member james.d.gifford
I still can't believe this book doesn't make course lists... Smart is utterly stunning.
LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
Over a year to read this slim book. She lays her heart so bare that I could only read this in moments of emotional calm. A tribute to the writing is that I could leave it by the bedside for months and then pick up and read on as if I had laid it down only the night before.
Have 'read' it a second
Have 'read' it a second
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time as an audio book. Show Less
LibraryThing member charlie68
I liked the flowery prose and the indirect writing style but generally I think this book is overrated. Not enough of a plot to really know what it was about, but it was also short, which is also a plus.
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1945
Physical description
240 p.; 5.2 inches
ISBN
0679738045 / 9780679738046