It seemed in 2003 that when Margaret Avison became the Canadian recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize for Concrete and Wild Carrot <\/i>that this would be a fine culmination to her distinguished poetic career.\u00a0 <\/span>When Brick Books released it, it was only her second new collection of poetry in thirteen years \u2014 and only her sixth, in a career that began with her highly acclaimed first book, Winter Sun<\/i>, which had come out in 1960. When she won the Griffin she was already well into her eighties, and was no longer venturing far from her home in central Toronto. The Porcupine\u2019s Quill soon began to release her three volume collected poems: Always Now<\/i> (Volume one came out in 2003, volume two in 2004, and volume three in 2005.) Since I knew there were to be some new poems included in Always Now<\/i>, when I interviewed Margaret in November 2004, I asked her if she might consider publishing another collection after that. She avoided giving me a straight answer by saying, \u201cI haven\u2019t come to a crashing stop\u201d (Martin 2005, 76). <\/b>She certainly had not. <\/span><\/p>\n In 2006 McClelland & Stewart released what I consider to be the finest single collection of Margaret Avison\u2019s career: Momentary Dark<\/i>, and at the time of her death last summer she had almost completed the manuscript for her final book of poems, Listening<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew nothing about this manuscript, until Joan Eichner \u2013 Margaret\u2019s close friend and the first sounding board for much of her work \u2013 came to a reading I was giving in Toronto last spring. Joan was justifiably excited about the release of Margaret\u2019s \u201clast poems.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n When Margaret Avison died on July 31, 2007 at the age of 89, I was saddened \u2014 although I doubt she would have wanted anyone to respond in that way. I had the chance to meet her twice, to interview her in public at The Word Guild\u2019s \u2018Write! Toronto\u2019 conference, and to correspond with her \u2014 primarily to expand and refine the interview for publication in the journal Image<\/i> (Martin 2005). I consider Margaret Avison to be one of the most significant poets of our time.<\/span><\/p>\n What makes her poems stand out, among the work of so many poets, is the way they grow deeper and deeper with subsequent readings. Their density, initially obscured through her unorthodox sentence structure, slowly reveals their meanings. Consider, for example, her reflections in \u201cThe Eternal One\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n His nestlings are (Avison 2009)1<\/sup><\/p>\n As her final collection of poetry, Listening<\/i> can best be understood within the context of her life, her faith, and the body of her work. She was born in Galt, Ontario (now part of Cambridge) in 1918, but spent her childhood in Regina and Calgary, before returning to Ontario for her high school and university years in Toronto. It is through the impressions of this prairie girl, in the poet\u2019s memory, that we see tall Toronto trees, and feel their presence. Squirrels, branches and leaves appear throughout, but I believe it is particularly Toronto trees (as specifically identified in \u201cEver Greens\u201d and \u201cSoundings\u201d) that she is thinking of. <\/span><\/p>\n In Margaret\u2019s final years she was less able to get beyond the city, and yet Toronto\u2019s natural offerings were rich enough in inspiration for her. The title of her collection, Concrete and Wild Carrot<\/i>, speaks of her observations of the physical world \u2014 what I called back then, \u201curban nature poetry.\u201d Even though she was confined to downtown Toronto, she could see nature pushing its way up through the concrete: \u201cthe wild carrot you can find by walking along mews and laneways or looking through the subway window along the open cuts,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n In Momentary Dark<\/i>, I sense Margaret doing more and more of her observing through windows. In \u201cMaking,\u201d for example, she begins by considering mist-like snowflakes. \u201cOur roof \/ breathes them\u201d she says, and then her imagination carries itself up to the clouds and beyond to the stars. The poem concludes when an observation through her window brings her back down to earth. <\/span><\/p>\n Just now a glint of (Avison 2006, 31)<\/p>\n In Listening<\/i>, she seems to be even more hemmed-in: \u201cLast year\u2019s pussy willows \/ branch about all \/ winter in \/ a dry pewter vase\u201d she writes (\u201cA Lingering Touch\u201d). Similarly she sees that, \u201cThe last two daffodils \/ are dying on my table\u201d (\u201cStill Life\u201d). Her observations of the out-of-doors here come frequently through the lens of memory \u2013 sometimes childhood memories such as, \u201cthat last \/ evening, in good old summertime \/ before the move out West\u201d. In \u201cOther\u201d she remembers an early morning, in a small Toronto backyard when various birds \u201ctwittered and piped and gurgled all \/ at once\u201d \u2013 all the more remarkable because to her \u201cThe birds seem few now.\u201d Such distances did not dull her razor-sharp perceptions.<\/span><\/p>\n I asked Joan Eichner \u2013 her literary executor \u2013 if perhaps Margaret became more prolific in her final years because she was able to avoid the distractions that a more mobile life thrusts upon us. Joan agreed, and said of the time prior to her death, \u201cphysically she was limited and her eyesight was poor, so she was not very active though she made a point of walking with her walker outside every day for a short distance. What she could still do was to read\/write under a strong light in her high-backed chair; this enabled her to carry on with her poetry, as well as with her autobiography\u201d(Eichner, 2009).<\/span><\/p>\n That autobiography has recently appeared in the book, I Am Here and Not Not There <\/i>(Avison, 2009). That volume includes some shorter pieces: two essays written by Margaret, some early letters from the 1940s and 1950s to other writers, and three interviews, including the one I conducted with her for Image<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n In holding her work in such high esteem, I am in good company. At her death, Michael Higgins, of St. Thomas University, called her, \u201carguably Canada\u2019s pre-eminent poet writing in English\u201d (Higgins, 2007). She has twice won the Governor General\u2019s Award for poetry \u2013 for Winter Sun<\/i> (1960), and for No Time <\/i>(1989) \u2013 she received the Griffin Poetry Prize for 2002’s Concrete and Wild Carrot<\/i>, she won the 2005 Leslie K. Tarr Award for career achievement, and she has been made an officer of the Order of Canada. Canada\u2019s first Poet Laureate, George Bowering, once referred to her as, \u201cthe best poet we have had\u201d (Martin, 2005, 65).<\/span><\/p>\n Forms of the word \u201clisten\u201d appear throughout the new collection. Margaret Avison\u2019s poetry is often about giving attention, and often about reflecting on meaning; therefore, Listening<\/i> is a most suitable title. The title poem, \u201cListening (for Grandma)\u201d is about language, and words \u2013 in this case words given by \u201ca kindly \/ elder,\u201d that to the young Margaret seemed to have \u201cno heft\u201d for her: <\/span><\/p>\n Words up in the Years later she discovers how those words take on the voice of the deceased, as she comes to know what her grandmother knew, and \u201chow \/ real words are\u201d even though we can take them for grated.<\/span><\/p>\n …Those Margaret Avison began writing poetry when she was very young. Her parents had encouraged her early efforts. \u201cThe family myth designated me as a writer,\u201d she said; \u201cI myself narrowed that in time to poet, sensing that poetry could utter what understanding could not, or had not, penetrated\u201d (Kent, 2008, 51-59). As an elementary school student her first poems appeared in a Calgary newspaper, and then in The Globe and Mail <\/i>once her family had returned east. When she was a grade nine student at Humberside Collegiate, in west Toronto, a teacher had been very encouraging to her concerning a poem she had written, called \u201cOde to the apple core.\u201d She makes reference to this early effort in one of the later poems in Listening<\/i> \u2013 \u201cOccasional Poem\u201d \u2013 which was written after the death of her niece. In part she reflects on the different views of death at various stages of life. Here and throughout the book she seems to be finally acknowledging her age. <\/span><\/p>\n Avison\u2019s poetry can at first be difficult to access. Her sentences often cause the reader to take several stabs at them in order to decide how a word functions within the whole, and how one sentence relates to another. For example, \u201cFor the Children\u2019s Questions\u201d begins, \u201cWhat is this glinting \/ deep (or gasping uprush); \/ the \u201cwhy, how, when\u201d of it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Her asides in the middle of a complex thought can be distracting, but it is her use of words as nouns that seem to want to be read as verbs \u2013 or as verbs that deceive us into thinking they are nouns \u2013 that slows me most. In \u201cSlow Start\u201d she says, \u201cOn the \/ muddle of not yet un- \/ differentiated clouds \/ stray \/ marbling streaks.\u201d <\/b>Perhaps you clearly read that sentence without trouble, but it took me several tries before I read \u201cmarbling\u201d as a noun (not an adjective or adverb) and \u201cstreaks\u201d as a verb (not a noun). In this way, Avison slows her readers\u2019 progress, enabling them to be more reflective and thoughtful, as she is herself being reflective and thoughtful. As David Kent \u2013 an important Avison commentator \u2013 has said, \u201cHer poetry is, first of all, challenging because her own voice is so distinctive and her poetry so freshly unpredictable\u201d (Kent, 2008, 51-59). <\/span><\/p>\n Like in her earlier books, her obsession with the meanings of words, root words and etymology continues. She asks \u201cDon\u2019t we tend to \/ twist lines, try to ad lib some \/ \u2018general sense\u2019 of \/ what the words mean?\u201d (\u201cMisconstruing\u201d), challenging us to have more care. In this example she considers the meaning of the word \u201cabominable,\u201d relating it to it\u2019s root, \u201comen,\u201d and reflects on our evasion of meanings that we\u2019re not yet ready for. Margaret Avison does not toss words around casually; her respect for language assures us that every word will be used with precision. In describing a long incarcerated, although innocent, prisoner on the day of his release (\u201cReleases\u201d) \u2014 she focuses on that word, what it means, and what it means for him and his family. She concludes with the following metaphor that will stir our understanding of that meaning:<\/span><\/p>\n Back where the icejam In \u201cTwo Whoms or <\/i>I\u2019m in Two Minds\u201d \u2014 which Joan Eichner tells me is a conversation between a philosopher (who speaks in generalities) and a poet (whose focus is particulars) \u2014 Margaret not only compares specific and general, but contrasts common and fancy words. Here she grows playful \u2014 \u201clet\u2019s have a cluster of \/ particulates that I can \/ dance among, with castanets.\u201d \u2014 and even this playfulness is in service of her reflectiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n Another recognizable Avison stylistic trademark is to often conclude a sentence that would otherwise be read as a statement with a question mark. In \u201cCome! With No Hostess Gift,\u201d from the new book, she is exploring God\u2019s perfection in the context of his omniscience, and says, \u201cBut \/ that would be an \/ imperfection without \/ the spice of now and then \/ wincings, and… \/ wit?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n I believe she adds the question mark partly to avoid being didactic, as if she is asking her readers if they think her statement is true. I asked her about this technique in the context of her poem \u201cMeditation on the Opening of the Fourth Gospel\u201d from No Time<\/i>. She said, \u201cOne reason I do it is in order to get under the text. I particularly like to ask these questions of something familiar in scripture, to try to read it in a new way. Something familiar can become unfamiliar as you approach it. Sometimes my questions are a way of feeling my way into a subject, and sometimes they\u2019re straight questions\u201d (Martin, 2005, 70). <\/span><\/p>\n There are many examples of such straight questions in Listening<\/i>. A few poems have question marks in their titles, and there are only 16 of the poems in the book that don\u2019t use question marks at all. This emphasizes just how much questioning is part of her style. In this way she even communicates much through the absence of a question mark. In \u201cEver Greens\u201d she refers to God as \u201cthe \/ eternal Who, \/ creator of \/ trees\u201d. The poem concludes with the words, \u201cWho \/ knows.\u201d It is not a question. <\/span><\/p>\n In No Time<\/i>, Avison wrote extensively of Christ\u2019s incarnation and of God as saviour, whereas, recently she has focussed on him more as the creator. In her poem, \u201cOn a Maundy Thursday Walk\u201d (from Concrete and Wild Carrot<\/i>), she begins, \u201cThe Creator was \/ walking by the sea,\u201d and then she considers the unsullied perfection of his creation in contrast with the faultiness of \u201ceven our \/ most excellent makings\u201d (Avison, 2002, 71). In Listening<\/i> she continues this reflectiveness in \u201cCome! With No Hostess Gift\u201d in \u201cEver Greens\u201d and as follows in \u201cPilgrim\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n As the Creator made Margaret\u2019s conversion to Christian faith in January of 1963 was not an incident independent of her poetry, but very much a result of her poetic vision. She followed a path that is common to many poets who come to Christian faith:\u00a0 <\/span>she closely observed the world, and expected it to reveal something of itself to her. Later, when she began reading her Bible, she was ready for a similar opening of meaning. <\/span><\/p>\n She grew up within the church \u2013 her father was the minister at High Park United Church during the depression \u2013 but she turned away from its teachings and the middle-class lifestyle she had been raised to. Her politics were leftist, and she became an agnostic for many years. At this time, she had published her first book, Winter Sun<\/i>, to much critical praise.<\/span><\/p>\n One day she was smoking and working on some proofs in the basement of Emmanuel College at University of Toronto, when a girl came in and spoke to her of Jesus. Margaret brushed her off, but the girl invited her to attend Knox Presbyterian Church, which she eventually did. Even with time, she had trouble getting at the obvious faith of the congregation, so the minister challenged her to read from the Gospel of John every morning before she went to work. At seven o\u2019clock one morning she read John 14:1 \u201cYou believe in God; believe also in me.\u201d Margaret told me that she had had a strong sense of Jesus\u2019 presence within the room. \u201cWell, okay, I\u2019ll believe in you, but don\u2019t touch the poetry, because it\u2019s all I\u2019ve got left.\u201d she had said. Immediately she felt cold and hardened. She picked up her Bible and threw it across the room. \u201cOkay, take everything then!\u201d \u2014 \u201cAnd that,\u201d she told me, \u201cwas the beginning\u201d (Martin, 2005, 68). <\/span><\/p>\n How is it that someone \u2013 whom some might dismiss as being \u201cmerely\u201d a religious poet \u2013 has, in our very secular age, been able to attract such notice? Perhaps it\u2019s her lineage, working in the rich tradition of great poets of Christian faith such as John Donne, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T.S. Eliot. More likely, it is just the fact that she is such a talented and disciplined poet. She matter-of-factly said to me, \u201cComing to faith enriched my subject matter\u201d (Martin, 2005, 67).<\/span><\/p>\n In the praise poem \u201cDiadem\u201d from Momentary Dark, <\/i>she says:<\/span><\/p>\n To the (Avison 2006, 41)<\/p>\n And she wants us, her readers, to be listening and paying close attention, too. <\/span><\/p>\n To Margaret, having people probing into her life has always been a regrettable result of her artistic success \u2013 an infringement on her privacy. \u201cI wish it could be deferred until people are dead,\u201d she told me in the Imag<\/i>e interview. David Kent found this out the hard way, having her at first co-operate with him in his research towards a critical biography, but later finding her increasingly uncomfortable. He insightfully points to two reasons: The first, theoretical objection \u2013 which I think is a smoke screen \u2013 is she felt \u201cattention to the writer\u2019s life inevitably distracted readers from the work itself\u201d (Kent, 2008, 51-59). If this were the real reason, I doubt she would have written her own memoirs. Her emotional objection, according to David Kent in a recent piece in Canadian Notes & Queries<\/i>, relates to growing up as a pastor\u2019s daughter, always under the scrutiny of the entire congregation. Perhaps he is right. He eventually offered to not publish anything biographical about her while she was still alive. \u201cThe project that has been dormant for over fifteen years can now be resumed,\u201d he told me (Kent, 2009).<\/span><\/p>\n Every poem in Listening<\/i> had been completed when Margaret died \u2013 and was sitting in a particular drawer \u2013 with the exception of the extensive, \u201cOur ? Kind\u201d (thirteen pages long in Listening<\/i>). Joan Eichner does not believe Margaret had quite finished revising it, but it is included because it had been such an important poem to her. She had been preoccupied with the trial of Saddam Hussein, Joan told me, and this gives the proper context for understanding the poem \u2013 even though it veers into the behaviour of swans, her own childhood mistreatment of a neighbour child, medieval Europe ravaged by the Black Death, post-Great war pacifism, and the behaviour of city racoons. It is not a political poem, so much as a poem about humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n Having a familiarity with the Bible would be helpful in reading some of Margaret Avison\u2019s poetry, but she is well aware that many of her readers do not. She helps us with footnote references to scripture, which will enable us to delve deeper, although often the reference isn\u2019t needed to catch the essential meaning. What they give us is somewhere to further pursue the background of her thinking. Similarly in \u201cA Hearing\u201d from Momentary Dark<\/i> the footnote to Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet<\/i> simply gives us the background from which her musing began.<\/span><\/p>\n Beyond the noted Biblical references to \u201cconsuming fire,\u201d in the poem \u201cFlaming?\u201d, I suspect there\u2019s also an allusion to the story of the three Hebrew youths in Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar had thrown into his fiery furnace for not bowing before him (Daniel 3). Such unnoted allusions, however, in her poetry are less frequent.<\/span><\/p>\n I have learned to pay close attention, though, to such details as capitalization. She will often capitalize words such as \u201cYou\u201d or \u201cHis\u201d (as in the title poem) as obvious references to God; in other cases, she\u2019s letting us know a word has more than its apparent significance. Sometimes it\u2019s relating to scripture; Joan believes \u201cDay\u201d (\u201cHeaven\u201d) refers to \u201cthe day of the Lord\u201d from Revelation 16:14 and elsewhere in the Bible. Sometimes it\u2019s referring to something of importance from elsewhere in the poem; \u201cHead\u2019s\u201d (38) in \u201cOur ? Kind\u201d is referring to Saddam Hussein who is later called the \u201cHead of State\u201d (48) in the same poem.<\/span><\/p>\n Growing old is a subtle theme within this final collection. In \u201cSoundings,\u201d for example, she compares three things: art, old age, and Toronto trees \u2014 and here makes the observation that \u201cOld age excels \/ in listening.\u201d She uses a traditional rhyming quatrain in \u201cSafe but Shaky,\u201d which expresses the concerns of the elderly. Also, in \u201cSlow Breathing,\u201d reflecting on the time of recovery during the lull between Christmas and New Year\u2019s, she says, \u201cOld age too is an \/ unfestive interlude.\u201d Interlude? Yes, she expresses her firm hope that, just as a new year follows the old, death is not the end. She acknowledges there are losses that shatter<\/span><\/p>\n the heart, ripen a She gives us much to consider.<\/span><\/p>\n Margaret Avison\u2019s Christian faith is central to how she viewed this world, and to the insights she expressed in some of the best poetry ever written in Canada. In the end she set an example as to how to speak about ultimate things with humility and grace \u2014 with a voice that causes us to listen.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cHer death was very peaceful,\u201d Margaret\u2019s close friend, Joan, told me by email that summer, \u201cand she wanted to be with her Lord.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Avison, Margaret. Listening: Last Poems<\/i>. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009.<\/p>\n _______.\u00a0 <\/span>Momentary Dark<\/i>. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2006.<\/p>\n _______. Concrete and Wild Carrot<\/i>. London, Ontario: Brick Books, 2002.<\/p>\n _______. No Time<\/i>. Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1989.<\/p>\n _______. Winter Sun<\/i>. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1960.<\/p>\n _______. Always Now<\/i>, Vol. 1-3 Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine\u2019s Quill, 2003-2005.<\/p>\n _______. I Am Here And Not Not-There<\/i>. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine\u2019s Quill, 2009.<\/p>\n Eichner, Joan. Personal e-mail conversation, 2009.<\/p>\n Higgins, Michael. www.catholicregister.org, 2007.<\/p>\n Kent, David. Canadian Notes & Queries<\/i>, no. 73 (Spring\/Summer 2008).<\/p>\n Kent, David. Personal e-mail conversation, 2009.<\/p>\n Martin, D.S.. Image,<\/i> no. 45 (Spring 2005).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by D.S. Martin It seemed in 2003 that when Margaret Avison became the Canadian recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize …
\nsheltered within
\ndeep-bosomed trees;
\nthese raise soft domes, care
\nfor the air. We breathe.
\nUnderneath, when
\nstunned by sunmelt
\ntheir felt dimness is
\nshimmery rest…\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsunlight on glass alerts me.
\nThat massive cloud has all
\ncome underfoot, unsullied white.<\/p>\n
\nair they\u2019d seemed, blown eastward with
\nthe early spring winds. When I am old
\nperhaps I will be savouring the
\nsquirrelling words at play in
\nmy innermost branches?<\/p>\n
\nwords, still hers, now
\nmurmur within, massy as a
\ngolden heirloom.<\/p>\n
\nbreaks, where frolicking waters
\nfoam and swirl down, up, over flooding
\nwintry fields and rutted roads, the scramble for
\ndeliverance is, this day,
\nin all its senses widely,
\nwidely understood.<\/p>\n
\nevery orb and places
\nwhere they could roll, and every
\nocean, each with its beaches and
\npromontories so there could be
\nland greening day by day,
\nat peace with the dark hours, He
\nsaw that it was good.<\/p>\n
\nawakened eye, although
\nsea-wrack green and bronze are un-
\npromising, fresh growth peers visible forth.<\/p>\n
\nperson\u2019s experience before
\nthe last-of-light is, once-
\nfor-all, the new
\nthreshold.<\/p>\n
\nNotes<\/h2>\n
\n
References<\/h2>\n