The Still Small Voice
Poems. By Elizabeth Jennings. (Fantasy Press. 3s. 6d.) THE poetry of both Elizabeth Jennings and Ruth Pitter comes under the rubric "still, small voice," but is none the worse for that. Miss Pitter has described her own subject-matter in the title poem of her book: • " I through his snowy silence hear Beyond the labyrinthine ear."
The keynote of her poetry is innocence and a penetration to the heart of things. Like Walter de la Mare she creates a shadowy world,
but without his lurking monsters, and from the natural terror of death can produce a beauty of repose that informs her best poems.
Miss Jennings is more intellectual, though her poems seem decep- tively simple. Her love poems analyse human relationships with considerable acumen, and her lyric fervour does not prevent her ending with a bare Empsonian line: "And love arrived may find us somewhere else." It is usual, when criticising poetesses, to refer to their work as sensitive, but it is a measure of Miss Jennings' quality that it is possible to find better things to say. She is a true lyric poet who has also a strong intellectual grip on her verse. She already stands out among young writers, and I think we shall hear
Previous page
