The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Her relationship with her parents was stormy at best not least because her father made her undertake a "cure" for her supposed spinal deformation involving locking her into an iron frame. In 1929 Edith Sitwell publiEdith Sitwelld Gold Coast Customs a poem about the artificiality of human behaviour and the barbarism that lies beneath the surface. The poems Edith Sitwell wrote during the war brought her back before the public.

With her dramatic style and exotic costumes Edith Sitwell was sometimes labelled a poseur but her work was also praised for its solid technique and painstaking craftsmanship. Sitwell publiEdith Sitwelld poetry continuously from 1913 some of it abstract and set to music. Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic eldest of the three literary Sitwells.