I Rejoice Jennings Analysis

The four rhymed quatrains are controlled successively by images of ice, fire, stone and earth- - exact images which symbolize particular moods and feelings relating to the overwhelming desire for oblivion. This single poem sums up and epitomizes many of the inchoate feelings that were diffused among the various poems of Relationships. According to Anthony Thwaite, “I Feel” is one of the nakedly direct poems which remind one of her former strengths and something of intensity of Emily Dickenson” (Thwaite 43).Jennings shows that she admires qualities in this poet’s work which Thwaite discerns in her own work. She writes that Dickenson’s poems are “notable for their nakedness, for their fearless presentation of experience which are deeply and often

The tone of elan which defines the relationship of various personae to their readers in Growing Points (1975) modifies into a tone of poised diffidence in Consequently I Rejoice (1977) The personae of Consequently I Rejoice are not animated by sheer delight in the diversity of experience; instead, their voices are subdued, and their attitudes are tentative and exploratory as they “rejoice/ Having to construct something upon which to rejoice.”( 356) The poems in Moments of Grace (1979) stress the significance of the mystical at the centre of the creative act and indicate that Jennings continues to make explicit her indebtedness to Romantic

Women are found noticeably confident with idiomatic speech, in the apparently individual expression required by the lyric as well as their formerly preferred dramatic monologue and dialogue where they now take more risks in playing the literary off against the dialect. As Carol Rumens states in her introduction to New Women Poets (1990) “Poetry’s vital energies derive from the way we speak and it perhaps takes special courage for women poets to write in a way that stresses this relationship, rather than seek approval by flaunting their more academic literary credentials”(Rumens