Extraordinarily funny, with the fresh eye of a visitor from another world, Stevie Smith is a poet to savor. Wielding a throwaway wit and the strangest irony, Stevie Smith was deeply read in the classics and yet sprinkled her poetry with delightful doodles. Her poems are often very dark; her characters are perpetually saying goodbye to their friends or welcoming death. At the same time her work has an eerie levity. Countless are her witty ways. The title of her first collection says it perfectly: A Good Time Was Had by All.

I longed for companionship rather, But my...