2. Topic - Father To
Son
Submitted by -
AKshdeep
Submitted
to -

3. Born: July 2, 1926, Lincolnshire
Died: October 25, 2001
Books: New collected poems, A Spell of
Words, Every changing shape, After the ark
Education: St Anne's College, Oxford High School

4. Jennings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire.
When she was six, her family moved to Oxford,
where she remained for the rest of her life. There
she later attended St Anne's College. After
graduation, she became a librarian.
Jennings' early poetry was published in journals
such as Oxford Poetry, New English Weekly, The
Spectator, Outposts and Poetry Review, but her
first book was not published until she was 27.
The lyrical poets she cited as having influenced
her were Hopkins, Auden, Graves and Muir. Her

5. Regarded as traditionalist rather than an
innovator, Jennings is known for her lyric
poetry and mastery of form. Her work displays
a simplicity of metre and rhyme shared
with Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom
Gunn, all members of the group of English
poets known as The Movement. She always
made it clear that, whilst her life, which
included a spell of severe mental illness,
contributed to the themes contained within her
work, she did not write explicitly
autobiographical poetry. Her deeply
held Roman Catholicism coloured much of her

7. I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I
know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small.
Father To Son
(Elizabeth Jennings)

8. However old one grows, one always remains a
child for one’s parents. But the child, after
he has grown up, no longer regards his
parents as parents. He looks upon them as
strangers. His enstrangement causes the
parents deep agony. The father in this poem
says that he no longer understands the same
child with whom he has been living for years
in the same house. Now he knows nothing of
him. He has become a total stranger for
him. The father wants to build up a
relationship with him. He wants the same
kind of relationship that he used to have
when the son was a little child.

9. ….....Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no
sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.

10. The father feels that the very seed of that
relationship, on which he had spent his all
has been killed. Or, he had sown it on a
land that did not belong to him. It belonged
to his son and he had no right to it. In
other words, all the pain and energy of the
father in bringing up his son has gone waste.
That seed of relationship which he had been
nurturing with such love has now sprouted on
someone else’s land. In other words, the
son’s affections have now turned from his
father to anything else. Now they speak to
each other like strangers. There is no
understanding between them.

11. The father says that he had brought up the
child according to his own designs, but now
he doesn’t like any of the things that his
son loves. In other words, the father loved
to see the grow up according to his own
designs, but now the son has hi own
different ways which the father doesn’t like
at all.

12. Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he
knew,
Rather than see him make and
move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.

13. No interaction or conversation takes place
between the father and the son. They
don’t speak a word to each other. He
wants his son to comeback to him. He
wants to rebuild his relationship with him.
He is prepared to accept him with all his
profligacy. He wants him to come back to
his father’s home. He doesn’t want him to
go and take a separate home of his own.
He says that he would forgive him for all
the sorrow that he has given him. Out of
that sorrow he wants to form a new love.
In other words, he wants to forget all
that has been bitter between them.

14. Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same
land,
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out and empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.

15. The father says to his son that both of
them have live on the same globe and on
the same land. Therefore, there is no
reason for them to live as strangers. The
father can’t understand why in his grief he
becomes angry with his son. He feels that
neither of them has gained from the
present state of enstrangement. Both of
them are in search of some excuse to
forgive each other. Thus the father doesn’t
hold his son guilty. There is simply a
difference in the ways of life – the
generation gap.