"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 goldfish." -Edith Sitwell
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Sitwell had angular features resembling Queen Elizabeth I (they also shared the same birthday) and stood 6' (183 cm) tall, but often dressed in an unusual manner with gowns of brocade or velvet with gold turbans and a plethora of rings - her jewelry may be seen in the jewelry galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her unusual appearance provoked critics almost as much as her verse, and throughout her life she was the subject of more or less virulent personal attacks from Geoffrey Grigson, F. R. Leavis and others, which she returned with vigour. As she lay dying, the critic Julian Symons published the last of these attacks in The London Magazine of November 1964, accusing her of 'wearing other people's bleeding hearts on her own safe sleeve.' Her 'enemies' were treated with scorn; after Noel Coward wrote a skit on Sitwell and her two brothers as The Swiss Family Whittlebot for his 1923 revue London Calling! she refused to speak to him until they were reconciled after her triumphant 70th birthday party at London's Festival Hall. To her friends she showed great sweetness and invariable kindness.
Sitwell was most interested by the distinction between poetry and music, a matter explored in Façade (1922), which was set to music by William Walton, a series of abstract poems the rhythms of which counterfeited those of music. Façade was performed behind a curtain with a hole in the mouth of a painted face and the words were recited through the hole with the aid of a megaphone. The public received the first performance with bemusement, but there were many positive reactions."
Sitwell was most interested by the distinction between poetry and music, a matter explored in Façade (1922), which was set to music by William Walton, a series of abstract poems the rhythms of which counterfeited those of music. Façade was performed behind a curtain with a hole in the mouth of a painted face and the words were recited through the hole with the aid of a megaphone. The public received the first performance with bemusement, but there were many positive reactions."
(courtesy of wikipedia.....but how great)
one of her poems:
INTERLUDE
by: Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
MID this hot green glowing gloom
A word falls with a raindrop's boom...
Like baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where
Those goldfinches--the ripe warm lights
Peck slyly at them--take quick flights.
My feet are feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard;
I bring you branches green with dew
And fruits that you may crown anew
A word falls with a raindrop's boom...
Like baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where
Those goldfinches--the ripe warm lights
Peck slyly at them--take quick flights.
My feet are feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard;
I bring you branches green with dew
And fruits that you may crown anew
Your whirring waspish-gilded hair
Amid this cornucopia--
Until your warm lips bear the stains
And bird-blood leap within your veins
you can hear an audio poem here:
an old school poet rockin'
1 comment:
sometimes i also have feathered feet i think.
did she do the painting too? who is she?
sincerely,
the one eyed shrew who does nothing but sit on her ass all day and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsmen's loom
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