By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

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For some of the people / some of the times, I mean (being old enough to know those who have made it into something sustainable). In an essay for Open Letters Monthly, Ingrid Norton stated "the power of emotion to transform one’s perspective on the world is the theme of this wildly poetic novel", calling it "a howl of a book, shot through with vivid imagery and ecstatic language, alternately exasperating and invigorating". Todo está condensado en esas diez fotografías sacadas del álbum de Elizabeth y George: los nervios del primer encuentro; la exaltación de la felicidad, de la belleza y la juventud que no pueden desperdiciarse sin amor; la feminidad desbordada; el orgullo de sentirse amada; el dolor y la desesperación en los momentos de separación; la espera interminable; el rechazo de los demás.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept: The Novel as a Poem by Alice Van Wart, in Studies in Canadian Literature Aun sin tener la cultura necesaria para exprimir todo el sentido a las múltiples referencias, relaciones y citas que incluye, la obra puede disfrutarse como lo que es, una dramática y lírica plegaria por un amor complicado. Un libro carente de línea argumental, a veces caótico, siempre exigente y extraordinario, y sí, por momentos, oscuro e inescrutable (¡Ay esa parte siete!). Pero no es necesario entender cada frase, cada párrafo para captar y aprehender y saborear la fuerza del sentimiento que trasmite, la tragedia que retrata. El libro es el alma de su autora. De lo exterior, de los hechos, solo podemos hacernos una nebulosa idea: suficiente. Y en cada una de esas etapas, esta tormenta de emociones queda enmarcada dentro de un triángulo amoroso omnipresente, en el que la relación entre ambas mujeres –la rivalidad, la admiración, la culpa– es tan importante como las otras dos. Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate. En Grand Central Station me senté y lloré' de Elizabeth Smart es un libro escrito en prosa poética y en un estilo delicado y sensual que ningún hombre podría imitar aunque lo intentara (un estilo que me recuerda terriblemente al de Jeanette Winterson, pero también un poco al de Janet Frame, o Jean Rhys, o A.S. Byatt). Elizabeth Smart es una escritora canadiense que se trasladó a Londres para estudiar música. Allí, un día, como por azar, entró en una librería y compró un libro de poesía de George Barker, y se enamoró no sólo de los poemas sino también del escritor. Pasó un tiempo, por fin lo conoció y, a pesar de que él ya estaba casado, empezaron una relación tempestuosa de la que nacieron cuatro hijos. La relación se terminó, pero ella no dejó de amarlo. 'En Grand Central Station' se basa en esta relación. Es una obra en la que los hechos externos nos son dados en cuentagotas. Más que narrar hechos, describe sentimientos, prescindiendo de prácticamente todo lo externo. Así la narradora describe por los estadios que pasa en su relación amorosa: esperanza, sentimiento de culpa, alegría, plenitud, duda, decepción, miedo, alejamiento, rabia, tristeza, vacío, etc.The novel has been referenced many times by the British singer Morrissey. The title was adapted by the band The Kitchens of Distinction in the song "On Tooting Broadway Station".

a b c Barton, Laura (March 6, 2013). "The poems and punch-ups of By Grand Central Station". The Guardian. London . Retrieved September 8, 2019. You don't take much interest in politics, do you? You never read the newspapers? I drank my coffee, but I had a slight feeling of nausea. It's to be expected, I don't mind it at all, it's nothing.

Oh, canary, sing out in the thunderstorm, prove your yellow pride. Give me a reason for courage or a way to be brave. But nothing tangible comes to rescue my besieged sanity, and I cannot decipher the code of the eucalyptus thumping on my roof. when i was fifteen, i had a journal. and i would smoke a joint and lie on my tummy and record my huge earthshattering thoughts. Elizabeth Smart: Manuscript Gallery at Literary Manuscripts Collection of Library and Archives Canada

Y pese a tanto sufrimiento, Smart expone claramente su preferencia por esta destructora cara del amor si la alternativa es la mera indiferencia. Pues no querría yo sentir una pasión tan desgarradora, ni que la sintieran por mí, no querría ser yo, no soy, esta yonqui del sentimiento que rehúsa cualquier método de desintoxicación y capaz de decir: brigid brophy's introduction is excellent. i read it last, of course, and it made me appreciate the book so much more in retrospect, and it also reminded me of the several parts i did enjoy. but i have to give it two stars, because i really didn't enjoy reading it. there were moments of great beauty, but too many parts where i was just gagging on her prose. i am all for pain and howling emotions,but isn't it the responsibility of the writer to marry the vulnerable raw nerves with craft?? it is true there were many moments where i was totally on-board with her writing, but when it was bad, it was very very bad.i like crisp prose, clean lines, smart phrasings. this seemed too self-indulgent - too emotionally bloated.too much "why use one word when you can use ten and still say nothing??" going on. After a while I got out into the open air, and his face was the moon hanging in the snowy branches.” there is a way to be evocative and complicated and beautiful all at once, "the smile on your face was the deadest thing alive enough to have the strength to die," anyone??

Injure me, betray me, but only make me sure of the love, for all day and night, away from him and with him, everywhere and always, that is my gravity, and the apples (which ben ripe in my gardayne) fall only towards that. Excerpts from the novel, and other of the author's writings, feature in Elizabeth Smart: On The Side of the Angels (1991), an hour-long documentary of the writer, written and directed by Maya Gallus. Poetry in prose. Very emotional telling of a forbidden relationship. It is said to be a classic in this genre. This is about love, desperation, and mental disparity (contemplated suicide also plays a role here). It is beautiful and disjointed; somber, yet hopeful; trenchant, yet gracious, and articulate, but at times, also reticent.

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I'm awful at praising things I really like. "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept" captures doomed and terminal love that will never fully die in a wonderful / painful manner. I am shot with wounds which have eyes that see a world of sorrow, always to be, panoramic and unhealable, and mouths that hang unspeakable in the sky of blood.See a woman who is part of an unending love triangle, feel the music of her "love language" through this prose poem, follow the staccato of her thoughts, know that this is about love and its melancholy. Unrequited love? No. Unappreciated love, I would say. Love that is not true. But who I am to judge the confounding love the author shares with her married, unavailable, and narcissistic lover? One day, while browsing in a London bookshop, Elizabeth Smart chanced upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker – and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker’s impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife from Japan, where he was teaching, to join her in the United States. Thus began one of the most extraordinary, intense and ultimately tragic love affairs of our time. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written – ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’.