SOURCE: "The Poems of Stevie Smith," in Canto: Review of the Arts, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1977, pp. 181-98.

In the following positive review, Simon praises the scope and profundity of the verse in Collected Poems.

On Smith's preoccupation with death:

"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him," says E. M. Forster. Something like that notion became, early along in Stevie Smith's career, a working principle. In 1937 she wrote to playwright Denis Johnston that "here was I thinking of my next, and going to call it Married to Death, I'm nuts on death really…. But this Death idea, it is very prominent, rather a running-away in my case I am afraid, not very strrrong of me." But clearly just the confession of such weakness gave her strength, superiority: "I often try to pull myself together, having been well brought up in the stiff-upper-lip school of thought...