By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Ratings4
Average rating2.4
15
Ratings4
Average rating2.4
Originally published in 1945, this book of poetic prose encapsulates former journalist Elizabeth Smart’s relationship with poet George Barker. Instantly, upon picking up a book of his poetry while browsing through a London bookshop, Smart fell in love with the poet. They would soon begin an indulgent love affair during which she gave birth to four of his children. He, however, remained legally married to his wife. This tale of passionate but fanatical love is a modern reflection of the Romantic poets. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius. Foreword by Brigid Brophy
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The grief trumpets its triumph. It is raving. It craves violence for expression, but can find none. There is no end. The drowning never ceases. The water submerges and blends, but I am not dead. O I am not dead. I am under the sea. The entire sea is on top of me.
For me, good poetry has an element of universality; the act of reading/interpretation becomes itself an act of authorship (à la Barthes). But the emotional charge in By Grand Central Station seems tied to Smart's personal experience in a way that limits its accessibility. It feels both shockingly public and elusively private.
I wanted the text to be either more or less coherently grounded in the reality of the events Smart was chronicling (events that require research in order to follow with any degree of clarity). At times the narrative context is handed directly to the reader, but at other times it's completely obscured (often in its place Smart asks us to build impressions on a sparse framework of intertextual references), while the sense of it being crucial to the text's interpretation remains frustratingly present.
There's no denying the power of the cutting imagery that flashes throughout this work, but ultimately I just wasn't moved by this in the way that I thought I might be.
