SOURCE: "Daddy, Mummy and Stevie: The Child-Guise in Stevie Smith's Poetry," in Modern Poetry Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1983, pp. 232-44.

Critics agree that in Stevie Smith's work "cleverness and innocence … are curiously and winningly combined." They also agree that she is a difficult writer to peg—she is "unhousled," "unplaceable," and "open to every likelihood and perhaps finally partial to none." Commentators on Smith's poetry fall back on adjectives such as "sprightly" and variations of the catch-all "charming." While they never dare utter "eccentric old dear," it seems to be on the tips of their tongues. Like most critics who attempt to deal with Stevie Smith, the anonymous reviewer in TLS (14 July 1972) goes to great lengths to avoid critical judgment of the poet's work:

One often wants not to criticize Stevie Smith's poems, merely to accept them in the spirit or mood they create. They arouse not so much...