Elizabeth Smart: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945)

Abstract

In her insightful introduction to Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, the late, poetically gifted Brigid Brophy wrote that it is one of the “half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world.” What’s poetic prose read like? More importantly, what makes it poetic prose? When negotiating with notions of poetic prose, one usually marks the Symbolist poets as the point of departure, Baudelaire as the poet of departure, and how his poetic prose became the foundation for the majority of prose poetry subsequently written. Incorporating Baudelaire, this chapter explores Smart’s unique use of poetic prose within the framework of a novel in a manner novel for its time (118).