Not how the sun was plausible at morning
Nor how it was distributed at noon,

And not how much the single stone could show
But rather how much brilliance it would shun;

Simply a paring down, a cleaving to
One object, as the star-gazer who sees

One single comet polished by its fall
Rather than countless, untouched galaxies


from 'The Diamond Cutter'
   

Selected Poems draws on all the books Elizabeth Jennings published before Growing-Points. It represents the poet's own distillation of the first two decades of her writing - the poems which established her as one of the most passionate and precise of our writers, a woman of humane values, religious vision and natural sympathy. 'The outstanding thing about Jennings's poetry' wrote Douglas Dunn, 'is its wisdom, hard earned from grief and religious faith.' And Peter Levi says, 'She is one of the few living poets we could not do without.'