Elizabeth Jennings' “Absence”
Elizabeth Jennings is a prolific, Twentieth Century, English poet, noted for her clarity of style and simplicity of literary approach. Whilst her Roman Catholicism colours much of her work, it is not much in evidence in the piece studied here. She has always made it clear that, whilst her life, which includes a spell of severe mental illness, contributes to the themes contained within her work, she does not write explicitly autobiographical poetry.
Elizabeth Jennings is not an generally regarded as an innovator, and her work displays a simplicity of metre and rhyme that she shares with poets such as Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn, all members of a group of English poets known simply as The Movement.
'Absence' is a clearly rhymed, three verse poem, written in a highly romantic, traditional style. The typically simple five line structure, with lines one, three, and five as one rhymed set, and two and four as the other, focuses the attention on the language used and the emotional content, and is ideally suited to the sincere and unpretentious emotions the poem chooses to present. With the exception of lines two and four of the third and final verse ('Force'/'Grass'), all of the rhymes are very strong (i.e. 'Met'/'Jet' 'These'/'Breeze').
Most of the language is understated and calm, at times delightfully delicate, which heightens the effect of the more forceful lines in the closing section.
As the work's title makes clear, the poem is about something that is no longer present, quickly shown to be a companion. The opening line simply and directly introduces the short narrative subject; “I visited the place where we last met.” {line 1} The nature and identity of her missing associate is never revealed.
The next two lines stress how “Nothing was changed {line 2} “ in the garden, “The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet” {line 3}. Here the use of the words 'usual' and 'steady' highlight the continuity of the scene.
The fourth line brings in the rub of this apparent stasis; “There was no sign that anything had ended” {line 4}. The poem's title and the preceding lines, however, make it clear that, for the narrator, something definitely has ended. Somebody who was here before, is not here now. That this absence is a painful one is strongly hinted at in the last line of the first stanza; “And nothing to instruct me to forget” {line 5}.
The second verse introduces the “thoughtless birds” {line 6} in the garden, their voices “Singing an ecstasy I could not share” {line 7}. Here, the grief hinted at in the first stanza comes out into the open.
The second verse as a whole makes it clear that, whilst the gardens themselves have not altered, the narrator's perception of them has changed completely. The birds, once a source of joy, are now “Playing cunning” {line 8} with her thoughts.
At first she seems not to quite understand why the effects of these things have changed so much for her as she queries; “Surely in these pleasures there could not be a pain to bear. Or any discord to shake the level breeze” {lines 8 to 10}.
It is also interesting to note the punctuation of the above quote. Grammatically speaking, it is in the form of two questions, and yet there are no question marks. Careful reading of the poem suggests that this was deliberate. Putting a question mark at the end of the line would have made the reader instinctively pause and 'answer' the question, but this would break the flow of the verse, and weaken what follows. By leaving the mark out, and supplying the answer on the very next line, the author maintains the momentum, and prevents discursive lines of thought on the part of the reader.
In the last stanza, the opening line declares; “It was because the place was just the same.” {line 11} Here the reason for her sadness is revealed. The place is inextricably associated with the missing person. A strong impression is made that this is likely to be the first time she has been there without him (or her). The very sameness of the setting reminds her all too strongly that she is now here on her own, and that she will never again share these gardens with the one now gone.
In the poem's last four lines, the strength of her feeling is brought home powerfully. Here she compares the gentle imagery of the garden with an absence seen as a “savage force” {line 12}, and continues; “For under all the gentleness there came an earthquake tremor: fountains, birds and grass were shaken by me thinking of your name” {lines 13 to 15}. That her view of everything around her is coloured by her sense of loss is all too obvious.
The poem is extremely effective and moving. And yet no real clues are given as to the identity of the absent person. In fact, it is not even clear that it is a person, it could have been a beloved pet. Nor can we be sure of what has happened to them. Has the relationship ended? Have they died? Have they moved away? All is left open.
I feel that, far from leaving the poem vague and ambiguous, this technique widens the emotional impact of the piece. If the author had been more specific about the nature of the absence, it would have limited the full empathetic appeal of the poem to those people who had lived through similar experiences.
If, for instance, she had said that it was about an elderly lady who had lost her husband after fifty years of happy marriage, it would have made it more difficult for a younger person who is either still married, or maybe not yet been married, to fully relate to the emotional content of the poem.
As it stands, the poem reaches out to nearly all of us. For there can be few of us who have not experienced a painful loss of some sort or other during our lives. And, whatever the nature of our loss, we can easily relate to the feelings so delicately portrayed in this work.
Many times I have seen the world carry on as normal, no heed taken of events which, as an individual, have left me changed forever. The sun still rises and sets, the leaves still turn gold in the fall and the moon still waxes and wanes. For loss is a ultimately a personal thing, but the world around us is for all.
