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Unread 04-13-2018, 04:55 PM
Cally Conan-Davies Cally Conan-Davies is offline
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Default Elizabeth Jennings

Dana Gioia has a fantastic essay in 'First Things' about the mightily neglected Elizabeth Jennings. It is such an interesting subject written about with such impressive clarity that I thought others here might enjoy it, too.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/...f-the-galaxies
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Unread 04-13-2018, 05:28 PM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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After reading a A.E. Stallings tweet, I picked up a Selected of Jennings (1979). It was either that or the enormous Collected (2012). Gioia strikes me as dead right when he writes that "Her reputation would be larger had she published less" and "There is an urgent need for a new selected volume of her verse." Probably of roughly the same length of the old one. Lots of good stuff, but still some mediocre in the 1979.

The best stuff ranks up there with the best Movement poems, though.
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Unread 04-13-2018, 07:51 PM
Cally Conan-Davies Cally Conan-Davies is offline
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A big YES from me on the bits you've quoted, Andrew. Also, a quick google showed a biography due later this year, the first on Jennings I'm aware of?? I could be wrong.
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Unread 04-13-2018, 08:00 PM
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Mary Meriam Mary Meriam is offline
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Thanks for this, Dink. I enjoyed the article immensely. Looking forward to reading more EJ.
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Unread 04-13-2018, 08:04 PM
Cally Conan-Davies Cally Conan-Davies is offline
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I could feel you reading it beside me as I read it, Mems!! Uncanny . . .
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Unread 04-13-2018, 08:06 PM
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Mary Meriam Mary Meriam is offline
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I felt that too!!!!! I was thinking, yes, Dink is thinking of me about this and that, and I'm thinking of her about this and that.
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Unread 04-14-2018, 08:50 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Elizabeth Jennings
Absence

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out from the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Last edited by Andrew Szilvasy; 04-14-2018 at 10:54 AM.
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Unread 04-14-2018, 09:06 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Hi Andrew,

I think you have a typo here. "The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees," says google. And it seems to need a preterite.
The name at the end seems a bit weighty, so I am going to read that as G-d.

Cheers,
John
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Unread 04-14-2018, 10:55 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Hi John,

Yup. Typo. That's what I get for typing it myself rather than googling it. That line and the following strike me as a brilliant repackaging of "Darkling Thrush."
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Unread 04-14-2018, 11:22 AM
Nigel Mace Nigel Mace is offline
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Good to see people here rediscovering Jennings. Introduced to her by my late wife, I've long been an admirer - even though she could be a little on the gloomy side. Another poet with depressive episodes, I believe - and the biography will be interesting. However, I always enjoyed the seemingly artless skill of her writing and its thoughtful and tender register.
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