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The Daily Poem

Elizabeth Jennings' "Act of the Imagination"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6729 Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2019

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's poem is Elizabeth Jennings' "Act of the Imagination." Remember, rate, review, subscribe.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to the daily poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

0:09.0

Today's poem is by an English poet named Elizabeth Jennings. She lived from 1926 to 2001.

0:16.3

She received in 1953 an award for the Arts Council of Great Britain Prize for the Best Book of Poems.

0:23.6

She won the Somerset Ma'am Prize for A Way of Looking in 1955 and the W.H. Smith Literary

0:29.3

Award for Collected Poems in 1987. She also received an honorary doctorate of divinity from

0:35.0

Durham University in 2001 and in 1992,

0:38.4

commander of the Order of the British Empire. So needless to say, she is a highly well-respected

0:43.7

poet of the 20th century. The poem that I'm going to read today is called Act of the Imagination.

0:52.1

It's from her collected poems. It goes like this. Surely, an act of the

0:59.9

imagination helps more than one of faith when a doubt brushes us. We need strong passion to summon

1:07.7

miracles. Life after death, bread turning into flesh and blood from wine, I need to cast

1:15.0

around and find an image for the most divine concepts. My mind must move on holy ground. And then the

1:21.8

hardest creed, the rising from death when Christ indeed bled finally. Ideas cannot come as barren notions. Yes, I always need

1:31.1

Herbert's sonnet prayer, say, or that great Giotto painting for my heart to leap to God. I want to

1:36.8

meet him in my own poems. God is metaphor in rising up. I watch a lucid sky and see a silver cloud and Christ behind it.

1:46.3

This is part of faith.

1:48.0

Here the great hour is sung and let faith be loud with the best imagining we have.

1:53.4

This is how I approach my God-made man.

1:57.5

Thus I learn to love and yes, like Thomas, know Christ through a touch.

2:07.1

After hearing that poem, I'm guessing it's not a surprise that Elizabeth Jennings was a devout Catholic,

2:14.4

or that her work was highly influenced by England's best Catholic poet, perhaps, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

2:25.7

Thematically, you see a lot of Hopkins here. You hear the same images, the same questions, the same

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