Way of Looking

A Way of Looking by Elizabeth Jennings, 55 pages

There is a "way of looking" that does not really see, that ignores the particular in favor of the universal, abandons the concrete for the abstract.

     It is the association after all

     We seek, we would retrace our thoughts to find

     The thought of which this landscape is an image,

     Then pay the thought and not the landscape homage.

     It is as if the tree and waterfall

     Had their first roots and source within the mind.

There is also another way of looking, a way of contemplation and attention.

     But something plays a trick upon the scene:

     A different kind of light, a stranger colour

     Flows down on the appropriated view.

     Nothing within the mind fits.  This is new.

     Thought and reflection must begin again

     To fit the image and to make it true.

This is the way of true poetry, and it is the way of Elizabeth Jennings.