Every Changing Shape (Lives & Letters) by Elizabeth Jennings ( Carcanet Press Ltd.)

I have often wished for a biography of the English poet Elizabeth Jennings, but that wish is unlikely to be fulfilled. Although she struggled with mental illness like her contemporary poets Plath, Sexton, Lowell, and Berryman, she differs from them substantially in her traditionalist verse, her strong Catholic faith, and her life as a single woman. Finally I turned to this book, originally published just two years before Plath's suicide, to learn more about Jennings -- and found myself in a timeless world as she opens to us the riches of mystical experience as exemplified in the poetry and poetic prose of the Western Christian tradition. Her chapters on Julian of Norwich, Herbert and Vaughan, Simone Weil, and Edwin Muir were the highlights for me, but every chapter is a sheer delight to read. To top it off, Jennings shares with us traces of mystical experience in poets who fall noticeably outside of this tradition, such as Rilke, Wallace Stevens, and Hart Crane. Every Changing Shape, published in 1961 and now in paperback for the first time, considers from a Christian poet's perspective how religious or mystical experience informs the imagination. Elizabeth Jennings wrote the book early in her career; it continues to provide crucial readings of her chosen authors and clues to her own poetry.

Very highest recommend!