... He hangs upon the Cross and I seek words
And how they can be lifted into prayer.
The soldiers come with hammers and with
swords
And flies are buzzing in the blinding air.
Should I seek opposites as Herbert did
To reach the truth: I need the spirit to
Leap through flesh...


from 'Prayer: Homage to George Herbert'
           

In her long experimental poem 'Concerning History' from her 1998 collec-tion Praises, Elizabeth Jennings asks,
'Does history tell love-stories? 'The answer as she, like her mentor Robert Graves, knows is yes, if the poet listens carefully. Out of lives which history mistreats, out of crisis, out of innocence and out of religious faith emerge love stories. Like Rilke, her task is to praise, as a lover praises, the things made, the makers and the Maker.

All of Elizabeth Jennings's later poetry has been an act of prayer and praise. Things are no longer overlooked, the daily world is suffused with another light, ancient and steadily sourced. Her sonnets, sequences, lyric poems and elegies are the work of a writer endlessly curious about the human creature and its spiritual dimensions.