Elizabeth Jennings's [Growing-Points] reveals most of her strengths and fewer than usual of her weaknesses. All the Jennings hallmarks are here: scrupulous deployment of the iambic, purity of diction, psychological shrewdness, that parabolic movement from particular to general which crystallises in eye-catching, aphoristic last lines. Some of the limitations are also sporadically in evidence: a slightly too kidgloved, reverential, excessively wistful treatment of emotional states, a faint tremulousness which seems inseparable from the attractive delicacies of feeling, a lack of irony, suggestive ambiguity and dramatic dynamism. Nevertheless, the collection shows more variety, vigour and open-endedness than has been evident in Miss Jennings's recent work, and even though her best effects still work in terms of meanings rather than physical images, the purity of structure and verbal clarity she always strives to sustain can now accommodate richer, more complex realisations without being overloaded. If Miss Jennings's poems give the...