I think I'll change to Avison, just because, now it seems like she has some chance of winning, whereas before I doubted anyone else would vote for her.
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I think I'll change to Avison, just because, now it seems like she has some chance of winning, whereas before I doubted anyone else would vote for her.
I did not mean to slight Carson with that pick either;), but the samples luke provided in the past sort of gave me her number, and Avison seems to have some pleasant codes worth unraveling, at least at the moment, which would surprise my expections, and this is much to assume on so little familiarity, but there you go.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Avison is quite the surprisor - her last book of verse just came out a few weeks ago (posthumously), and is supposed to be quite good as well. Really though, her career spanned near 50 years, which is just staggering, given that she is one of the last remnants of the transitional generation of late-modernism into post-modernism in Canadian verse. But even so, it's rather a shame no one on your side of the boarder pays much attention to her, as she was undoubtedly as skilled as I think Carson is - the difference between them, I would think, is Carson is rooted in both the post-modern tradition and in the Classical tradition, whereas Avison is far wilder and harder to categorize, and I think as a public, readers love to be able to categorize things. There is a great Code, that of Classical literature, sounding behind Carson, which makes her easier to translate, to some extent, whereas Avison is quite different:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jozanny
For everyone
The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,
But many at that moment will not say
"This is the whirlpool, then."
By their refusal they are saved
From the black pit, and also from contesting
The deadly rapids, and emerging in
The mysterious, and more ample, further waters.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...ison/poem7.htm
The closest I can come to situating her within the tradition is to place her, both chronologically and poetically, behind modernist poets like P. K. Page (who I know had an affect on her work) but even so, the symbols aren't reliant on structural traditions, but rather on images taken outside of the tradition, and worked into a sort of metaphysical/meditative context. Perhaps in that sense, there is an echo of something like Wallace Stevens, but if there is, it is rather faint. Of course, this perhaps doesn't sound so spectacular, coming from post-modern perspectives, where we are as used to seeing a tin can as a symbol as we are an apple, but I think there is something beyond that - a sense of symbolism that exists in a stance before post-modernism, or perhaps outside of it - somewhere between what we would call the poetics of modernism, and yet somehow before, and apart from the poetics of post-modernism.
JBI: Margaret Avison does suprise, expecially since for me, she is a fresh voice. It's amazing how effective the Canada-Us border is when it comes to poetry. Otherwise it's just osmosis through a semi-permeable membrane. Now as for the new vote tally...let me try to get this right... First, I have a pm to Kafka's Crow to confirm his vote. Also Mr. Cloop, even though he made just one post, I sent him an invite. As it stands now, notwithstanding the former comments, Heaney has Dark Muse and Kafka's Crow(?)...Anne Carson has Stlukesguild... Allen Tate has mortalterror... Avison has Jozanny, Virgil and JBI. It seems there is a swing vote...that would be me. Looks like at this point the Avison's have it.
I'll need to know what title we are going with, then I will try to remember my password at Amazon...
addendum: I've been wanting to see Tate or Matthews on this thread for some time but now, in the light of other's preferences, I am, as happens so often, waffling.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2...ison-obit.html --- Canadian poet Margaret Avison dies at 89
Last Updated: Friday, August 10, 2007 | 5:41 PM ET
CBC Arts
------------------------------------------------ "Canadian poet Margaret Avison, described as "one of the great religious poets" of the 20th century, has died at age 89.
Avison died last week in Toronto. No cause of death has been released.
Avison won the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize four years ago and was twice winner of the Governor General's Award for poetry in a literary career that spanned 40 years.
Her first book of poetry, The Winter Sun, was published in 1960 and she became a "committed Christian" in 1963, often writing about her faith.
Many critics compare her work to the great metaphysical poets of the 17th century.
"It was a private religious conviction," said Joseph Zezulka, an English professor at the University of Western Ontario and friend of Avison.
"She was kindliness itself. She had so much tolerance and charity for her fellow beings, and I think that's the important thing about her Christianity.
"Her contribution to Canadian literature was incalculable," he said, adding that she had an international following."
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...ollected+Poems --- --- --- --- http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...nd+Wild+Carrot The Barnes and Noble bookmarks for each collection including prices.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw...oems&x=19&y=13 ---- http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?...rrot&x=15&y=16 Same links on Avison's collections via Amazon
Art has antennae always
in peril of pouncers, yet in-
domitably threading off into a
passing breeze. Art finds us
burrowing through our days, so
unroofs all usual places for
moments, irreversibly.
Old age excels
in listening. Voices sound
down the long corridors. This
opens beyond an unforeseen
gateway. To lift its
magic latch takes quiet
breathing. Curiosity is
unexacting, but expects
no less.
Toronto trees display the full
gamut of greens. These,
not the trees, age
in gold.
{excerpt...last two stanzas from "Soundings"}
That would be interesting--a contemporary poet with a 17th style. I think it would be a great thing. There isn't enough cleverness in today's poetry. Much of it is still locked in that 19th century dogma that poetry has to be all about quivering sensibility.Quote:
Originally Posted by quasimodo1
I don't know if this one is really metaphysical, though. In fact, it still rings very 19th C. It sounds like the poet is saying art liberates one from the narrow-minded drudgery of ordinary life. We're "burrowing through our days" and art "unroofs" us. It's a message that resonates with a lot of what was said in the Victorian period. Mill tells us that poetry overcomes the "factitious tendencies" set up by education and everyday business to reunite readers with their "natural" feelings and associations. Avison seems like she's reaching for something similar here.Quote:
Originally Posted by quasimodo1
JBI: We may need genre in both a synchronic and diachronic flow through culture, borrowing from Coletta, who I am reading, uneasily, and trying not to email her in my ignorance of a really textual pruning, which she is attempting in Plotting The Past, but what I do is tend to disown genre rather quickly, and wait for the likes of Eco to push and complete the boundaries, but I like authors who refuse ease of placement, which is why I tired of the Beats long ago. I tend to like defiance in that way, and without knowing anything of Avison except a quick Google search before I voted, here, I think, is the defiance of personal conviction, muted, to be sure, but another poet can feel it in the simplicity of how she uses whirlpool in your excerpt--which to me seems to say: Most of us avoid suffering and the cost of going through it, though her trope makes it elusive. Not Romantic, but not quite the post-modern need to fragment without a holistic approach either. Eliot takes his personal conviction and lobs it, in relation to faith amid the death of world order, but Avison isn't firing a canon so much as offering another way, a different cohesion, a reminder of community perhaps. I cannot share her conviction, but I can respect it, and perhaps what she is offering through it. I will see if Vine has any titles first, before I check Amazon. I have to unpack, ease my duress, find my way back to my work--which I have started by meditating online most of the afternoon. Right now isn't the best time for me to be buying books, given what the movers damaged in throwing me and the objects in my life around. They broke my Moby Dick edition in half, and I having stopped crying yet. I know it is just stuff, most of it worthless, the extension of a failed writer still fighting, but this is my life that keeps getting taken apart, and I suppose my anger keeps me as much alive as what it corrodes. I had no idea this woman could speak to it, and it is a shame she so recently passed.
Apparently, this group, and especially JoZ doesn't need a text to make the leep into analysis. As for your comment in that last posting, your writing reminded me of some of the best critics available and it's totally safe to say that "failure" is no prognosis for you as a scribe. While "real life" in all it's extremes and commonalities can bring anyone crashing into a not so sublime earth, whatever spark is required, you certainly have it. All that aside, there hasn't been a choice of text for Avison and although semi-stricly speaking we have until Tue for any kind of turnaround...it almost a given Avison will be the poet. I would choose ALWAYS NOW: THE COLLECTED POEMS since it encompasses more of her work but CONCRETE AND WILD CARROT, is an unknown source and therefore perhaps a period of her work which will have it's individual if not specialized content. Another round of preference, please.
I lean to the collected works, given that I've never read her before and probably should experience a broad range of her work. But I can go either way.
You do realize they are in 3 volumes, and are quite a few poems? I'm for one anthology, or perhaps one volume of the collected poems. It doesn't particularly concern me, as my public library has a large stock of resources on Avison (I'm going to be grabbing a little criticism to go with the discussion), but I think that 3 20$ books isn't really a good idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil