A Tragedy in Twelve Lines

Continuing our celebration of National Poetry Month, we turn this week to a poem that demonstrates the power of poetry to capture the human condition.

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Because much of it is so elusive, poetry can seem an esoteric exercise, an insiders' game for a small circle of connoisseurs. I suppose some writers have treated it this way, playing with words and sounds and taking delight in the intricate and elegant patterns they can craft.

Our greatest poetry, however, is anchored in real people and things. It says something worth knowing, even if it does so with elusive language, enigmatic symbols, and ambiguous images and sound patterns.

If you need an example of a poem with a deeply important message about human life, consider Stevie Smith's short, but potent poem, "Not Waving but Drowning":

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought   And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   (Still the dead one lay moaning)   I was much too far out all my life   And not waving but drowning.

In just 12 lines, Smith tells a heartbreaking story of a man's demise, a story that is moving not only because of his condition, but also because of his failure to communicate — or, rather, the failure of those around him to understand his message.

Indeed, the first three words clearly spell out the breakdown in communication: "Nobody heard him." The next three lines tell us that, despite this breakdown, he sadly, ironically, continues his efforts. Still he moans, specifically saying he was "further out" than people thought, "and not waving but drowning."

In the next stanza, we hear from the observers, whose language makes them sound almost indifferent. They express no emotion except to call him a "Poor chap" and offer an uninformed diagnosis, using the word "must" to indicate their speculation: "It must have been to cold for him his heart gave way."

Finally, we hear from the dead man again, who adamantly corrects them, saying "no no no" and trying to say, to deaf ears, that "it was too cold always" and that he was "much too far out" throughout his life. The poem ends on the only repeated phrase: "not waving but drowning."

These four words would seem to indicate that a drowning man was moving his hands in the air over the water, probably gesturing for help, but to no avail, since those on shore misinterpreted the meaning of what they saw. In short, they saw "waving" instead of "drowning." After all, some of the living believe he "always loved larking," so the moving arms apparently seemed like playful movements instead of calls for help.

When the man says, "it was too cold always" and "I was much too far out all my life," he seems to be saying that his death was a long time coming. Now, literature is open to interpretation, and I won't pretend that mine is definitive, but I see the drowning scene here as a metaphor for something broader, perhaps the destruction that can ultimately come as a result of mental illness — depression, for example. Many of us know people who seem fine, even jolly and funny, but who really are suffering emotionally. (Robin Williams comes to mind.) We might see them "waving," so to speak, as a means of "larking," but really they are drowning. If you are that person, you know the anxiety that comes with the experience of being unable to convey your feelings or your situation. You might want to say, with the "drowning" man in this poem, "I was much further out than you thought / And not waving but drowning."

This is a newsletter about ideas, not a guide to mental health, and I'm a literary scholar, not a psychiatrist, but let me just say here, as someone who cares about my fellow human beings, that I hope that anyone who feels this way will seek help and make their need explicit.

To return to my real expertise, I will end by making the case for the power of poetry. As Smith's poem demonstrates, words carefully chosen and arranged can bring us closer to reality and, sometimes, closer to one another.