Smart fell in love with the poet George Barker in the most intimate fashion -- through the written word. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is written in brazen and unflinching poetic prose which soars into air that I had never bothered looking up at before. This book is written quite beautifully - the poetic language meant that I really enjoyed actually reading it. I was so looking forward to reading it and I'm sorry to say that I found this work of poetic prose to be quite slow, especially in the first parts. Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely recognized as a classic work of poetic prose which, more than four decades later, has retained all of its searing poignancy, beauty, and power of impact.

Explores a passion between a man and two women, one of them his wife – a love despairing and triumphant upon which the reader may gaze, awed, appalled, or even, perhaps, envious. The things I am most curious about now aren’t the emotions that overwhelmed Smart but how she managed as a single mother in the 1940s- who looked after her children when she worked?

In 1943, in the midst of the Battle of the Atlantic, she sailed to England to join Barker, where she gave birth to their second child, Christopher.

How can she walk through the streets, so vulnerable, so unknowing, and not have people and dogs and perpetual calamity following her? Merryn on Yellowface: what a wild ride Interesting to read in the context of the Hugo Award shenanigans and Kuang's excellent book Babel being mysteriously declared ineligible when the awards are being. I realised that throughout their relationship, the idea of Barker was as important to her as the reality: the journey through the storm was as important as the arrival at his door. No leo poesía, no consigo disfrutarla, y sin embargo no es otra cosa esta personal e impúdica novela de Elizabeth Smart. Yo creo que es una obra bellísima (sobre todo las partes tres y cuatro, ciertos párrafos sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial muy reconocibles ya en la cultura popular y la última parte que le da nombre).I’m not sure if this was an actual event, or if it stands in for the way that Smart’s family was able to prevent Barker from crossing from Washington State into British Columbia, the westernmost province where Smart gave birth to their first child. It's the story of a woman in love with a married man, and what I've found is that it's just very, very difficult to convey the feeling of "forbidden love and overwhelming lust" without seeming like you're about to give yourself a stroke. Estas referencias no son un intento de lucimiento intelectual, ni un ejercicio de estilo; sencillamente la autora necesitó echar mano de todas las herramientas que tenía a su alcance, desde la cultura clásica hasta los anuncios de la radio, para esculpir un monumento al amor, a la valentía y a la libertad tan extraordinario e inolvidable. Written at a time (1940-44) when people were dying in their millions, she is living in comfort but full of self-pity.

Fueron tiempos duros –la guerra, los altibajos en la relación con George, el rechazo de la sociedad por su vida escandalosa– que dejaron su huella en el texto. However, I struggled to appreciate the raw honesty and passion it's famous for because I just found it too abstruse, too mired in wordplay, metaphor and reference to be truly moving. The second piece takes a while to get going, it's not until after the scene is set of life during and immediately after wartime that Smart finds her stride and really gets going. 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. Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely identified as a classic work of poetic prose which, more than six decades later, has retained all of its searing poignancy, beauty and power of impact.

Smart’s speaker is a pulsating nerve, unprotected from the larger world, suffering from the trauma of being a consistently othered and infantilised self. Brophy compares Grand Central Station to Jean Genet – I had picked this up on a whim instead of reading the Genet I'd already started.