Elizabeth Jennings has been a poet of solid if modest achievement, but her decline [in Relationships] is catastrophic. This new collection includes a poem addressed to Emily Dickinson, and one guesses that the American served as the model for much of it. For Emily Dickinson's apparent simplicity, however, Miss Jennings too often supplies bathos, and for phrases like 'zero at the bone' substitutes a language colourless to the point of invisibility. The trouble seems to be a lack of any real pressure in the creation of these poems. (p. 389)

Alasdair Maclean, "Marble Fun," in The Listener (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1973; reprinted by permission of Alasdair Maclean), Vol. 89, No. 2295, March 22, 1973, pp. 389-90.∗