You can read it here if you'd like. I highly recommend it. It's very short. The interesting thing about Stevie Smith however, is that many of her poems have accompanying pictures, though these aren't always published. Here's one of herself:
The drawing that's associated with "Not Waving but Drowning" isn't online, but it offers a stark contrast to the poem. The poem has two speakers from what I see-the dead man and the crowd. I think the "dead man" may still be alive. "Nobody heard him, the dead man, but still he lay moaning" as though the crowd already assumes he's died, but he's still there trying to get their attention. It's like the "I'm not dead yet" scene from Monty Python. If he is dead, there's this weird juxtaposition of the man being dead but still moaning. That, I suppose, goes along with the juxtaposition of someone not waving from the water but drowning from the water.
This is different from the picture-in the picture a person (who appears to be a woman) is standing tall in water that doesn't appear treacherous. Again, there's this juxtaposition-the man is drowning but a woman appears almost happy.
Either way, I think the poem is a type of commentary on society-that people tend to ignore or excuse away the bad things in the world. The people in the poem call the dead man "old chap" and say he probably died from the cold so that they don't have to really face what happened .
Or perhaps the poem is about people we know crying for help but never really seeing it.....that would be interesting considering Stevie Smith tried to kill herself in '53, like most modernist female authors.
Anyway, read and enjoy!
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