Sailor, What of the Isles?
TO MILLICENT HUDDLESTON ROGERS
The whole poem with it’s images of islands, sailors and the sea appeals to me- mostly through imagery rather than meaning. A friend comments, not unfairly I think……
She is a great enigma to me. I find her poetry both avant-garde and deeply conservative in its floundering eccentricity, like her life. She epitomises the remnants of a bankrupt class yet gives a voice to pertinent modern concerns. A voice that is both mesmerising in its clarity yet from an alien world.
Was it just show or does it present a living reflection of her/our times?
The Facade poems maybe found at https://www.londonmozartplayers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Edith-Sitwell-Facade-poems.pdf
and this poem in full at https://www.magyarulbabelben.net/works/en/Sitwell%2C_Edith-1887/Sailor%2C_What_of_the_Isles
where it is also in Hungarian!
penwithlit 