"In the mid-twentieth century, women had an established position in British poetry—second place."

CLARIFY ME, PLEASE, GOD OF THE GALAXIES

IN PRAISE OF THE POETRY OF ELIZABETH JENNINGSby Dana GioiaMay 2018


"Finally, something more needs to be said about Jennings as a woman poet. She never portrayed herself as a feminist, but she wrote from an explicitly female perspective. There is no way to understand her career without seeing how her sex shaped her personal and public identities. She began writing at a time when being female was a grave disadvantage. In the mid-twentieth century, women had an established position in British poetry—second place. They were published but not taken too seriously. The world of letters assumed that men led literary culture. Female poets were typecast as minor lyrists, concerned with personal matters. Tradition assigned men the larger, public themes and more capacious style. These assumptions allowed critics to recognize the more traditional elements in Jennings’s work (her elegant lyricism and formal mastery) but miss or misjudge its bolder aspects (her sacramental imagination and lacerating psychological insight)."