In the Meantime

Mary Jane Starr was with the National Library of Canada in Ottawa.

Elizabeth Smart is best known for By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, published in 1945 and reissued in hardcover in Canada in 1982. Her other works include two books of poetry, A Bonus (1977) and Eleven Poems (1982), and the poetic-prose work, The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals (1978). In the Meantime is a mostly unpublished collection (some pieces have appeared in out-of-print and difficult-to-find magazines) of poetry and prose.

The book is structured in an imaginative and effective way that reinforces Smart’s tenacious consistency in theme. Between the recent prose pieces, “Scenes One Never Forgets” and “In the Meantime: Diary of a Blockage,” are poems from various periods and a novella from 1939, “Dig a Grave and Let Us Bury Our Mother.” Pain, betrayal, failure, and, most importantly, passion inform all this writing, which spans a period of more than 40 years. While the themes remain constant, the style grows ever tighter and sparser as Smart struggles to come to terms with the process of writing and with human relationships. The tone is intense — unbearably so at times. Although she’s tilling old ground, Smart’s mixture of metaphor and insight produce her avowed purpose of writing, the so-called “magic marriage of words.” Minor catharsis is offered in the poems — indeed, poems such as “Old Woman, Flying” and “In the Whispering Hells” appear whimsical in comparison to other pieces, and the rhyming scheme in “The Muse: His & Hers” has an ameliorating effect on a still serious topic.

With the expected publication of Smart’s diaries, a more complete picture of her life and work will be available. In the meantime, however, this book adds to the scant, yet vitally important, work by Elizabeth Smart.