The Tuesday Poem

The NZ-based Tuesday Poem this week is about Rembrandt. It's written by UK poet Elizabeth Jennings and selected by this week's editor ex-pat NZ writer Belinda Hollyer. Belinda says of the poet: 'Jennings was – and still is – a much-anthologised poet, and works such as ‘Delay’ and ‘One Flesh’ are the ones most people will know.
I chose the Rembrandt poem because it seems to me to go straight to the heart of our fear of the real, dark, hugeness of death and decay, as well as of the challenges of art.'
In the comments, UK writer and Katherine Mansfield biographer Kathleen Jones says Jennings was undervalued as a poet because she wrote about 'women's issues': 'She was the token female member of a group of poets known as The Movement, which included Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, John Wain, Tom Gun and D.J. Enright. Say no more.' The poem begins:' You are confronted with yourself. Each year/
The pouches fill, the skin is uglier.
/You give it all unflinchingly.'


Once the Tuesday Poem visitor has visited Jennings and Hollyer, there is a blog list of 30 poets offering an enormous range of poetry - from a poem by Eileen Moeller which echoes the Rembrandt poem with a woman gazing in the mirror, to a heartbreaking (award-winning) poem on Japan by Johanna Aitchison, to an avant-garde poem by Orchid Tierney which could be about Japan, to a poem by Helen Lowe about Christchurch, to an audio poem by Anne Sexton called 'The Truth the Dead Know' .... Not hooked yet? Go on cast your line... http://www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/