ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the figure of the hermit-poet whose story concludes Smith’s fragmentary and likely unfinished poem, Beachy Head. The tale of the hermit not only manifests Smith’s tendency towards displacement in her poetic personae but also elaborates on the poet’s profound anxieties about the permanence of art and issues of audience. The voice of the speaker adds a further level of discomfiture to the poem, varying from overtly autobiographical to quasi-historical, even occasionally given over to dramatic personages in whom Smith sees some kinship. In its ruminations on fossils and its emphasis on the hermit’s inscriptions in the rock, Beachy Head also muses on the materiality of the text, its ephemerality, and the mysterious ways in which it enshrines and communicates personal memories.
