Elizabeth Jennings - A poet who dances to the flower of words, to the thread of importunate time

Between the inking or erasing points fixed by the choice of a conspicuous p osition or of a resigned silence, Elizabeth Jennings keeps on describing th e figures of a paradox. "A Summing-Up" gives the measure of their vanishing traces as out of true: "Committed poet-I am not quite that , /Though all t he other measures will not meet. "Straight above" the waster land, "the poe t thus remains on the edge of time where she can still define herself withi n it: "Poets must sometimes stand not outside but aside" ("The Difficult Ba lance"). Trying to specify this uncommitted commitment which prevents one f rom copying the breakage of the world or isolating oneself in the ivory tow er of idealism, as if overcome by the vertigo of weightlessness, implies ou tlining a "House of Words" (T74)-an intangible refuge haunted by a dream re vealed to others, a token of belonging to be found high up in the land wher e there also shines the home of God.