This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Elizabeth Jennings.
Lazarus
It was the amazing white, it was the way he simply
Refused to answer our questions, it was the cold pale glance
Of death upon him, the smell of death that truly
Declared his rising to us. It was no chance
Happening, as a man may fill a silence
Between two heart-beats, seem to be dead and then
Astonish us with the closeness of his presence;
This man was dead, I say it again and again.
All of our sweating bodies moved towards him
And our minds moved too, hungry for finished faith.
He would not enter our world at once with words
That we might be tempted to twist or argue with:
Cold like a white root pressed in the bowels of the earth
He looked, but also vulnerable – like birth.
Elizabeth Jennings (July 18, 1926 – October 26, 2001) was a 20th century English poet known for her lyric poetry and mastery of form. Her work displays a simplicity of meter and rhyme shared with Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn, all members of the 1950s group of English poets known as The Movement. She always made it clear that, while her life, which included a spell of severe mental illness, contributed to the themes contained in her work, she did not write explicitly autobiographical poetry. Her deeply held Catholic faith colored much of her work, and poet Dana Gioia, who reviewed Jennings’ life and career in 2018, said: “Despite her worldly failures, her artistic career was a steady course of achievement. Jennings ranks among the finest British poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She is also England’s best Catholic poet since Gerard Manley Hopkins.”
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: The holidays are fast approaching and The Catholic Poetry Room is welcoming submissions for the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany season. See the submission guidelines [https://integratedcatholiclife.org/2019/04/submit-your-poetry-to-the-catholic-poetry-room/] for a general idea of the work we prefer, and we’ll look forward to hearing from you. God bless.
