In The Night Jennings Analysis

Jennings continues to define her own place among contemporary writers in “Answers”, a poem which examines weakness inherent in the group’s aesthetic. In particular she questions their approval of a modest and an oblique approach to “big subjects” which, according to Morrison is indicative of a Movement aesthetic (Morrison 34). In a skillfully fashioned terzarima , a verse form favored by the Movement poets , she questions their esteem for “small answers” for a rational and a controlled approach to “big questions” as she says : “I kept my answers small and I kept them near;/Big questions bruised my mind but still I let/Small answers be a bulwark to my fear”(Jennings CP,53) The small answers formed a temporary defense against her fears and

Similarly, “In the Night” another poem written at this time can be read as a specific reaction against a provocative statement by Kingsley Amis, one of the most prominent members of the Movement confederacy. In “What Became of Jane Austen? ” Amis writes: “Admittedly to ask oneself: How am I to live? ‘ is to ask something real…..But it would be hard to attach meaning , except as an expression of lunacy or amnesia, to ‘ Who am I?’”(Amis, “What Became of Jane Austen?”

Here she moves away from the themes of self analysis and anonymity. Her language is more polished, and the forms are structured which exert a control over language and tone in many of the poems. This is because the nature of her transformation was deeply intuitive and therefore, slows process. The strength of these changes had to be felt and tried in the poems until it reached the brink in the collection of poems titled Song for a Birth or a Death