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Edith Sitwell: supporter of poets Dylan Thomas and Wilfred Owen
Portrait of a Barmaid and The Lady with the Sewing-Machine
Portrait of a Barmaid
Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar
Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.
Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles —
Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).
The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light
In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery
For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane
In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!
Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat —
A concertina’s glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green
Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.
The Lady with the Sewing-Machine
Across the fields as green as spinach,
Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,
Stands a high house; if at all,
Spring comes like a Paisley shawl —
Patternings meticulous
And youthfully ridiculous.
In each room the yellow sun
Shakes like a canary, run
On run, roulade, and watery trill —
Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.
Face as white as any clock’s,
Cased in parsley-dark curled locks —
All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,
Stitch life down for fear we guess
At the hidden ugliness.
Dusty voice that throbs with heat,
Hoping with your steel-thin beat
To put stitches in my mind,
Make it tidy, make it kind,
You shall not: I’ll keep it free
Though you turn earth, sky and sea
To a patchwork quilt to keep
Your mind snug and warm in sleep!
Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was an English poet and writer, and the most prominent of the three Sitwell siblings, all of whom made important contributions to the British literary scene of the early 20th century. Although a poet with a reputation in her own right, Sitwell is equally well-known for her generosity toward aspiring poets, welcoming promising talent to her residence, one of the premiere literary salons in England at the time. Dylan Thomas was among those who benefited from her generosity. She also helped secure a place in the literary canon for the World War I poet Wilfred Owen by supporting efforts to publish his poems after his untimely death during the war. Sitwell would greet visitors in exotic costumes and with a dramatic flair—yet her poetry was as substantive in both craft and technique as her style was flamboyant. Her birthday is September 7.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Edith Sitwell: supporter of poets Dylan Thomas and Wilfred Owen
Portrait of a Barmaid and The Lady with the Sewing-Machine
Edith Sitwell: supporter of poets Dylan Thomas and Wilfred Owen
Portrait of a Barmaid and The Lady with the Sewing-Machine
Portrait of a Barmaid
Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar
Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.
Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles —
Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).
The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light
In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery
For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane
In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!
Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat —
A concertina’s glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green
Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.
The Lady with the Sewing-Machine
Across the fields as green as spinach,
Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,
Stands a high house; if at all,
Spring comes like a Paisley shawl —
Patternings meticulous
And youthfully ridiculous.
In each room the yellow sun
Shakes like a canary, run
On run, roulade, and watery trill —
Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.
Face as white as any clock’s,
Cased in parsley-dark curled locks —
All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,
Stitch life down for fear we guess
At the hidden ugliness.
Dusty voice that throbs with heat,
Hoping with your steel-thin beat
To put stitches in my mind,
Make it tidy, make it kind,
You shall not: I’ll keep it free
Though you turn earth, sky and sea
To a patchwork quilt to keep
Your mind snug and warm in sleep!
Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was an English poet and writer, and the most prominent of the three Sitwell siblings, all of whom made important contributions to the British literary scene of the early 20th century. Although a poet with a reputation in her own right, Sitwell is equally well-known for her generosity toward aspiring poets, welcoming promising talent to her residence, one of the premiere literary salons in England at the time. Dylan Thomas was among those who benefited from her generosity. She also helped secure a place in the literary canon for the World War I poet Wilfred Owen by supporting efforts to publish his poems after his untimely death during the war. Sitwell would greet visitors in exotic costumes and with a dramatic flair—yet her poetry was as substantive in both craft and technique as her style was flamboyant. Her birthday is September 7.
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