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Elizabeth Jennings: Selected Poems
Book by Jennings, Elizabeth
- GenresPoetry
122 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 3, 2024
Loved these poems. It's been a while since I discovered a new-to-me poet that I loved this much! No surprise, since I discovered her via a festschrift for another favorite poet (Ruth Pitter). In addition to the standard poetry subjects (nature, love, friendship, emotions, religious subjects) Jennings writes about travels in Italy and mental hospitals. I found them all thought-provoking
"In This Time" (25)
If the myth's outworn, the legend broken,
Useless even within the child's story
Since he sees well they now bring light no longer
Into our eyes, and if our past retreats
And blows away like dust along the desert,
Not leading to our moment now at all,
Settling us in this place and saying 'Here
In you I shall continue'--then what kind
Of lives have we? Can we make myths revive
By breathing on them? Is there any taper
That will return the glitter to our eyes?
We have retreated inward to our minds
Too much, have made rooms there with all doors closed,
All windows shuttered. There we sit and mope
The myth away, set by the lovely legends;
Hardly we hear the children shout outside.
We only know a way to love ourselves,
Have lost the power that made us lose ourselves.
O let the wind outside blow in again
And the dust come and all the children's voices.
Let anything that is not us return.
Myths are the memories we have rejected
And legends need the freedom of our minds.
"Hurt" (121)
They do not mean to hurt, I think,
People who wound and still go on
As if they had not seen the brink
Of tears they forced or even known
The wounding things. I'm thinking of
An incident. I brought to one,
My host, a present, small enough
But pretty and picked out with care.
I put it in her hands with love,
Saying it came from Russia; there
Lay my mistake. The politics
Each of us had, we did not share.
But I am not immune to lack
Like this in others; she just thrust
The present over, gave it back
Saying, 'I do not want it.' Must
We hurt each other in such ways?
This kind of thing is worse than Lust
And other Deadly Sins because
It's lack of charity. For this
Christ sweated blood, and on the Cross
When every nail was in its place,
Though God himself, he called as man
At the rejection. On his face
Among the sweat, there must have been
Within the greater pain, the one
A hurt child shows, the look we can
Detect and feel, swift but not gone,
Only moved deeper where the heart
Stores up all things that have been done
And, though forgiven, don't depart.
"In This Time" (25)
If the myth's outworn, the legend broken,
Useless even within the child's story
Since he sees well they now bring light no longer
Into our eyes, and if our past retreats
And blows away like dust along the desert,
Not leading to our moment now at all,
Settling us in this place and saying 'Here
In you I shall continue'--then what kind
Of lives have we? Can we make myths revive
By breathing on them? Is there any taper
That will return the glitter to our eyes?
We have retreated inward to our minds
Too much, have made rooms there with all doors closed,
All windows shuttered. There we sit and mope
The myth away, set by the lovely legends;
Hardly we hear the children shout outside.
We only know a way to love ourselves,
Have lost the power that made us lose ourselves.
O let the wind outside blow in again
And the dust come and all the children's voices.
Let anything that is not us return.
Myths are the memories we have rejected
And legends need the freedom of our minds.
"Hurt" (121)
They do not mean to hurt, I think,
People who wound and still go on
As if they had not seen the brink
Of tears they forced or even known
The wounding things. I'm thinking of
An incident. I brought to one,
My host, a present, small enough
But pretty and picked out with care.
I put it in her hands with love,
Saying it came from Russia; there
Lay my mistake. The politics
Each of us had, we did not share.
But I am not immune to lack
Like this in others; she just thrust
The present over, gave it back
Saying, 'I do not want it.' Must
We hurt each other in such ways?
This kind of thing is worse than Lust
And other Deadly Sins because
It's lack of charity. For this
Christ sweated blood, and on the Cross
When every nail was in its place,
Though God himself, he called as man
At the rejection. On his face
Among the sweat, there must have been
Within the greater pain, the one
A hurt child shows, the look we can
Detect and feel, swift but not gone,
Only moved deeper where the heart
Stores up all things that have been done
And, though forgiven, don't depart.
July 2, 2013
I've been reading more poetry recently. A sort of hazy resolution if you will that I seem to be keeping to so far this year. My approach has been scattergun - the free form verse of John Berryman, the tight virtuosity of Elizabeth Bishop, the tanka of Chase Twichell. What they've all had in common is their lack of conservatism - all practise a kind of poetry which takes chances and risks with form. I opened up Elizabeth Jennings and found myself shocked - here was a poem laid out in the conservative stanza's I remembered from school - with ABAB rhyming schemes no less. Goodness, it felt almost deviant to read after the modernistic fireworks I'd become used to.
Form isn't content though. I found myself still entirely sucked into Jennings world in which themes of meditation, birth and death and religious experience permeate every evenly stitched verse. Perhaps overwhelmingly Jennings poetry is about concrete things and her wish to disappear into the gaps in between - a form of meditation. "A World of Light" draws this distinction clearly as Jennings attempts to lose herself in the sensation of darkness around a candle whilst finding herself pulled back by the physical - a sandal rubbing, "the distant voices" of her mind. More clearly still in "Stargazers and Others" where she commands the observer of stars and constellations to "let me be/ The space that your eye moves over". In this, she is closest in her constant quest for meditation and loss of self to one of the more free-spirited poets above - Chase Twichell.
Concrete objects are constantly circled in order to be pinned down - almost as if they need to be navigated around in order to more fully lose herself. She explicitly talks of the platonic ideal of in order to define and order her universe - even if it is in contrast - "I mean a world which I could inhabit freely, /ideas, objects, everything prepared;/not ideas simply as Plato knew them,".
Jennings was open in her belief that her poems were directly autobiographical - drawing on spells of mental illness and depression. Her religious beliefs and love of anglo saxon religious poetry are clear. She considered herself as having been relegated from the literary conversation of the time which she felt was dominated by Neo-Romantics such as Ted Hughes and Raine etc. Her tight, neat verses were out of kilter with the prevalent forms - from a different era in which poetry was more highly mannered and form based. She had not moved with the times. This is not to say that a romanticism does not at times permeate her work such as in her poem "In Praise of Creation" where the first stanza almost has a Blake-like flavour - "That one bird, one star,/That one flash of the tiger's eye". However here nature is in viewed in overview rather than through the crow's eys as in Hughes.
Overall, an eye-opener, a change of tempo and very welcome.
Form isn't content though. I found myself still entirely sucked into Jennings world in which themes of meditation, birth and death and religious experience permeate every evenly stitched verse. Perhaps overwhelmingly Jennings poetry is about concrete things and her wish to disappear into the gaps in between - a form of meditation. "A World of Light" draws this distinction clearly as Jennings attempts to lose herself in the sensation of darkness around a candle whilst finding herself pulled back by the physical - a sandal rubbing, "the distant voices" of her mind. More clearly still in "Stargazers and Others" where she commands the observer of stars and constellations to "let me be/ The space that your eye moves over". In this, she is closest in her constant quest for meditation and loss of self to one of the more free-spirited poets above - Chase Twichell.
Concrete objects are constantly circled in order to be pinned down - almost as if they need to be navigated around in order to more fully lose herself. She explicitly talks of the platonic ideal of in order to define and order her universe - even if it is in contrast - "I mean a world which I could inhabit freely, /ideas, objects, everything prepared;/not ideas simply as Plato knew them,".
Jennings was open in her belief that her poems were directly autobiographical - drawing on spells of mental illness and depression. Her religious beliefs and love of anglo saxon religious poetry are clear. She considered herself as having been relegated from the literary conversation of the time which she felt was dominated by Neo-Romantics such as Ted Hughes and Raine etc. Her tight, neat verses were out of kilter with the prevalent forms - from a different era in which poetry was more highly mannered and form based. She had not moved with the times. This is not to say that a romanticism does not at times permeate her work such as in her poem "In Praise of Creation" where the first stanza almost has a Blake-like flavour - "That one bird, one star,/That one flash of the tiger's eye". However here nature is in viewed in overview rather than through the crow's eys as in Hughes.
Overall, an eye-opener, a change of tempo and very welcome.
August 29, 2023
Here are some of my favourites from the collection:
DELAY
The radiance of that star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eye may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how
Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star’s impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.
IN THIS TIME
If the myth’s outworn, the legend broken,
Useless even within the child’s story
Since he sees well they now bring light no longer
Into our eyes: and if our past retreats
And blows away like dust along the desert,
Not leading to our moment now at all,
Settling us in this place and saying ‘Here
In you I shall continue’–then what kind
Of lives have we? Can we make myths revive
By breathing on them? Is there any taper
That will return the glitter to our eyes?
We have retreated inward to our minds
Too much, have made rooms there with all doors closed,
All windows shuttered. There we sit and mope
The myth away, set by the lovely legends;
Hardly we hear the children shout outside.
We only know a way to love ourselves,
Have lost the power that made us lose ourselves.
O let the wind outside blow in again
And the dust come and all the children’s voices.
Let anything that is not us return.
Myths are the memories we have rejected
And legends need the freedom of our minds.
STARGAZERS AND OTHERS
One, staring out stars,
Lost himself in looking and almost
Forgot glass, eye, air, space;
Simply, he thought, the world is improved
By my staring, how the still glass leaps
When the sky thuds in like tides.
Another, making love, once
Stared so far over his pleasure
That woman, world, the spiral
Of taut bodies, the clinging hands, broke apart
And he saw, as the stargazer sees,
Landscapes made to be looked at,
Fruit to fall, not be plucked.
In you also something
Of such vision occurs.
How else would I have learnt
The tapered stars, the pause
On the nervous spiral? Names I need
Stronger than love, desire,
Passion, pleasure. O discover
Some star and christen it, but let me be
The space that your eye moves over.
ABOUT THESE THINGS
About these things I always shall be dumb.
Some wear their silences as more than dress,
As more than skin-deep. I bear mine like some
Scar that is hidden out of shamefulness.
I speak from depths I do not understand
Yet cannot find the words for this distress.
So much of power is put into my hand
When words come easily. I sense the way
People are charmed and pause; I seem to mend
Some hurt. Some healing seems to make them stay.
And yet within the power that I use
My wordless fears remain. Perhaps I say
In lucid verse the terrors that confuse
In conversation. Maybe I am dumb
Because if fears were spoken I would lose
The lovely languages I do not choose
More than the darknesses from which they come.
REMEMBERING FIREWORKS
Always as if for the first time we watch
The fireworks as if no one had ever
Done this before, made shapes, signs,
Cut diamonds on air, sent up stars
Nameless, imperious. And in the falling
Of fire, the spent rocket, there is a kind
Of nostalgia as normally only attaches
To things long known and lost. Such an absence,
Such emptiness of sky the fireworks leave
After their festival. We, fumbling
For words of love, remember the rockets,
The spinning wheels, the sudden diamonds,
And say with delight ‘Yes, like that, like that.’
Oh and the air is full of falling
Stars surrendered. We search for a sign.
FOUNTAIN
Let it disturb no more at first
Than the hint of a pool predicted far in a forest,
Or a sea so far away that you have to open
Your window to hear it.
Think of it then as elemental, as being
Necessity,
Not for a cup to be taken to it and not
For lips to linger or eye to receive itself
Back in reflection, simply
As water the patient moon persuades and stirs.
And then step closer,
Imagine rivers you might indeed embark on,
Waterfalls where you could
Silence an afternoon by staring but never
See the same tumult twice.
Yes come out of the narrow street and enter
The full piazza. Come where the noise compels.
Statues are bowing down to the breaking air.
Observe it there–the fountain, too fast for shadows,
Too wild for the lights which illuminate it to hold,
Even a moment, an ounce of water back;
Stare at such prodigality and consider
It is the elegance here, it is the taming,
The keeping fast in a thousand flowering sprays,
That builds this energy up but lets the watchers
See in that stress an image of utter calm,
A stillness there. It is how we must have felt
Once at the edge of some perpetual stream,
Fearful of touching, bringing no thirst at all,
Panicked by no perception of ourselves
But drawing the water down to the deepest wonder.
POEM IN WINTER
Today the children begin to hope for snow
And look in the sky for auguries of it.
It is not for such omens that we wait,
Our world may not be settled by the slow
Falling of flakes to lie across our thought.
And even if the snow comes down indeed
We still shall stand behind a pane of glass
Untouched by it, and watch the children press
Their image on the drifts the snow has laid
Upon a winter they think they have made.
This is a wise illusion. Better to
Believe the near world is created by
A wish, a shaping hand, a certain eye,
Than hide in the mind’s corner as we do
As though there were no world, no fall of snow.
DELAY
The radiance of that star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eye may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how
Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star’s impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.
IN THIS TIME
If the myth’s outworn, the legend broken,
Useless even within the child’s story
Since he sees well they now bring light no longer
Into our eyes: and if our past retreats
And blows away like dust along the desert,
Not leading to our moment now at all,
Settling us in this place and saying ‘Here
In you I shall continue’–then what kind
Of lives have we? Can we make myths revive
By breathing on them? Is there any taper
That will return the glitter to our eyes?
We have retreated inward to our minds
Too much, have made rooms there with all doors closed,
All windows shuttered. There we sit and mope
The myth away, set by the lovely legends;
Hardly we hear the children shout outside.
We only know a way to love ourselves,
Have lost the power that made us lose ourselves.
O let the wind outside blow in again
And the dust come and all the children’s voices.
Let anything that is not us return.
Myths are the memories we have rejected
And legends need the freedom of our minds.
STARGAZERS AND OTHERS
One, staring out stars,
Lost himself in looking and almost
Forgot glass, eye, air, space;
Simply, he thought, the world is improved
By my staring, how the still glass leaps
When the sky thuds in like tides.
Another, making love, once
Stared so far over his pleasure
That woman, world, the spiral
Of taut bodies, the clinging hands, broke apart
And he saw, as the stargazer sees,
Landscapes made to be looked at,
Fruit to fall, not be plucked.
In you also something
Of such vision occurs.
How else would I have learnt
The tapered stars, the pause
On the nervous spiral? Names I need
Stronger than love, desire,
Passion, pleasure. O discover
Some star and christen it, but let me be
The space that your eye moves over.
ABOUT THESE THINGS
About these things I always shall be dumb.
Some wear their silences as more than dress,
As more than skin-deep. I bear mine like some
Scar that is hidden out of shamefulness.
I speak from depths I do not understand
Yet cannot find the words for this distress.
So much of power is put into my hand
When words come easily. I sense the way
People are charmed and pause; I seem to mend
Some hurt. Some healing seems to make them stay.
And yet within the power that I use
My wordless fears remain. Perhaps I say
In lucid verse the terrors that confuse
In conversation. Maybe I am dumb
Because if fears were spoken I would lose
The lovely languages I do not choose
More than the darknesses from which they come.
REMEMBERING FIREWORKS
Always as if for the first time we watch
The fireworks as if no one had ever
Done this before, made shapes, signs,
Cut diamonds on air, sent up stars
Nameless, imperious. And in the falling
Of fire, the spent rocket, there is a kind
Of nostalgia as normally only attaches
To things long known and lost. Such an absence,
Such emptiness of sky the fireworks leave
After their festival. We, fumbling
For words of love, remember the rockets,
The spinning wheels, the sudden diamonds,
And say with delight ‘Yes, like that, like that.’
Oh and the air is full of falling
Stars surrendered. We search for a sign.
FOUNTAIN
Let it disturb no more at first
Than the hint of a pool predicted far in a forest,
Or a sea so far away that you have to open
Your window to hear it.
Think of it then as elemental, as being
Necessity,
Not for a cup to be taken to it and not
For lips to linger or eye to receive itself
Back in reflection, simply
As water the patient moon persuades and stirs.
And then step closer,
Imagine rivers you might indeed embark on,
Waterfalls where you could
Silence an afternoon by staring but never
See the same tumult twice.
Yes come out of the narrow street and enter
The full piazza. Come where the noise compels.
Statues are bowing down to the breaking air.
Observe it there–the fountain, too fast for shadows,
Too wild for the lights which illuminate it to hold,
Even a moment, an ounce of water back;
Stare at such prodigality and consider
It is the elegance here, it is the taming,
The keeping fast in a thousand flowering sprays,
That builds this energy up but lets the watchers
See in that stress an image of utter calm,
A stillness there. It is how we must have felt
Once at the edge of some perpetual stream,
Fearful of touching, bringing no thirst at all,
Panicked by no perception of ourselves
But drawing the water down to the deepest wonder.
POEM IN WINTER
Today the children begin to hope for snow
And look in the sky for auguries of it.
It is not for such omens that we wait,
Our world may not be settled by the slow
Falling of flakes to lie across our thought.
And even if the snow comes down indeed
We still shall stand behind a pane of glass
Untouched by it, and watch the children press
Their image on the drifts the snow has laid
Upon a winter they think they have made.
This is a wise illusion. Better to
Believe the near world is created by
A wish, a shaping hand, a certain eye,
Than hide in the mind’s corner as we do
As though there were no world, no fall of snow.
March 8, 2022
This was probably a 3.5 as many of the poems did not reach me. Those that did really did however. Old Woman was excellent. She seems to be an excellent poet, with a feel for structure and subtle metre, and others will get far more out of this than I did.
Read
August 5, 2024“How even great faith leaves room for abysses/
And the taut mind turns to its own requirings.”
And the taut mind turns to its own requirings.”
August 18, 2016
Studied this at Advanced Level(Oxford) and grew to know many of the poems well. Many I still read up again and again, because this writer is so humane, so wise, so truly understanding of human nature. This is an in-depth description of some very intense emotions and experiences.
April 6, 2019
Forgotten, Perhaps, but Profound
Elizabeth Jennings may have slipped into obscurity, but her poetry deserves a more prominent position. She confronts emotional torment with almost Spartan eloquence; direct, yet subtle, one easily identifies with her anxieties and fears.
Elizabeth Jennings may have slipped into obscurity, but her poetry deserves a more prominent position. She confronts emotional torment with almost Spartan eloquence; direct, yet subtle, one easily identifies with her anxieties and fears.
March 21, 2019
Jennings' poems are the work of a perfectionist, but not one who views her work as more important than herself. Her poems are definitely an expression of Jennings' struggles with her doubts, fears, loves, and most importantly with her depression and imprisonment in various mental asylums.
Jennings has clearly chosen her every word extremely carefully, to do what poetry does best: expose the poet's emotion.
Jennings has clearly chosen her every word extremely carefully, to do what poetry does best: expose the poet's emotion.
January 18, 2018
There are some really fine poems here. I hadn’t heard of her until referee to in an essay about poetry.
March 31, 2019
Just lovely - grateful to Dr. Jane Dowson, a wonderful professor I met through work, for introducing me to her!
January 3, 2026
Good poetry.
March 26, 2013
Favourites include The Annunciation, Hurt, Considerations, World I Have Not Made, Lazarus, A Fear, In a Foreign City, A Roman Window and For a Child Born Dead.
Read
July 27, 2013very nice
October 29, 2013
Picked a random page to check this out. Really cried my heart out right then and there. Great first impression :') (page 63, My Grandmother)
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews