As for the Rose
poems by
Jenny Doughty
72 pages, $14 (+ shipping)
ISBN: 978-1-964277-74-5
Release Date: February 6, 2026
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Jenny Doughty is originally British but has lived in Maine since 2002. She is a former English teacher and was Education Adviser to Penguin Books in the UK. She edited an anthology of pre-20th century poetry for Penguin UK and published two children’s non-fiction books there under the name Jenny Green. Her short stories and articles have been published in several UK magazines, in one of which she also did a stint as an agony aunt (Brit-speak for a person like Dear Abby who offers answers to readers’ problems). In the US, her poems have been published in various reviews and anthologies. Her first poetry collection, Sending Bette Davis To The Plumber, was published by Moon Pie Press in 2017. She is currently President of the Maine Poets Society.
In a poem in this collection, Jenny Doughty remembers her childhood elocution teacher, who instructed her to make the words float in your mouth, which is just what the poet does in this deft, musical examination of one woman’s life from Yorkshire to Maine, from adolescent longing to adult sweetness and sorrow. ~Mark Doty, author of Fire to Fire: New & Selected Poems
Jenny Doughty’s gifted collection moves through layers of time from the bedrock of her birthplace in Yorkshire to arrival in Maine. She tells her story with such richness and rhythm we feel her words grow directly out of the soil where English was first spoken. Doughty’s voice is strong, sensual, at times tender or tough, but always courageous. This is a book to savor and to feel befriended by the poet’s deep sensibilities. ~Linda Aldrich, Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine
In her title poem, Jenny Doughty announces, “I don’t need / the past’s presence when I have its rose window, // the pattern of panes each with its own part / of the story.” Her view is panoramic, ranging across the fossil-rich landscapes and cultural history of her childhood in East Yorkshire. Here, too, are sensuous love poems and lyrics that luxuriate in the physical world even as the things and people we hold most dear “move towards decay.” The wisdom of this poet is in “knowing the love / story is all we remember.” ~Richard Foerster, author of Boy on a Doorstep: New and Selected Poems
Watching the little sisters
The teenage boys have gone to a back yard
somewhere in the neighborhood to hang out
behind a garage, pass around a joint,
and now I see their little sisters
take a turn at the basketball hoop
on the sidewalk: fifth graders in shorts
or old leggings starting to climb above
their thin ankles, T shirts still printed
with unicorns, still flat across their chests.
To watch them is to travel back in time
before the uniform of gender
fell across my shoulders, before the weight
of breasts and male gaze boxed out freedom
even more than the shot clock of childhood,
before bleeding and the inescapable
decades to come of decisions wrapped up
in owning a grown woman’s body.
There are so many ways of being fouled.
I never see them alone; they huddle
in pairs or groups of three or four. I hear
their high voices chattering, their laughter,
before the basketball bops on asphalt.
They practice defense, as women must,
dodging side to side to block a shot.
They jump high in front of the girl with the ball,
flinging their arms into the air, T-shirts
riding up over their bare bellies.
As for the rose
As for the idea of the rose, I turn
away from the sadness of those who came
too late to see it bloom and the silence
of those who covered its crown with soil
against frost, but also the limitations
of a flower, its single perspective,
view of a bed. I live in the valleys
of my years, remembering the high fells
as the hawk remembers the contours
of its soaring and the steep and swoop
to the slight movement of a mouse. I don’t need
the past’s presence when I have its rose window,
the pattern of panes each with its own part
of the story, its view of the whole scene.
The weight of a man
When I first felt the sweet weight of him,
the muscle and bone, firm flesh of him,
the rough hands and the tender place
where the pulse beat steady in his throat,
I tried him on for size, worked my way under
his skin, shrugged into his broad shoulders,
strutted with his long legs, stomped those big feet
along the paths of his thoughts, even saw
through his eyes, learned to love his music,
tasted with his mouth the food I made,
till his weight was my weight and for better
for worse I forgot how to walk alone.
October
That first October, new relationship,
we sat by the sea. No one else on the beach:
this shining world seemed ours alone, a pair
of sparrows nesting in the golden dome
of a vast cathedral. Behind us: dune grass,
purple-ripe beach plums, bittersweet flavor
of summer’s end, two lives with all their loves
and complications. Around us autumn
laid out its feast and we shared it, knowing
that as days diminished to have time to be
part of the beach, the ocean, the startle
of fall colours, was to know abundance,
to throw scarlet leaves in the air and laugh
as they fell, snow’s lovelier precursor.
