Full Description
"Always Now, Collected Poems of Margaret Avison", encompasses in three volumes all of the published books, from "Winter Sun" (1960) to "Concrete and Wild Carrot" (2002), and is framed by a gathering of uncollected and new poems respectively. When complete, "Always Now" will present all of the poems, up to 2002, that Margaret Avison wishes to preserve. Volume one extends from the uncollected poems to Avison's translations of Hungarian poems, and includes "Winter Sun" and "The Dumbfounding". Besides the uncollected surprises, two of them dating to high school days and first published in Hermes, Toronto's "Humberside Collegiate" literary magazine, there are the loved and familiar early poems, just as fresh now as they were then, from which certain wonderful lines still jump out: 'Nobody stuffs the world in at your eyes./ The optic heart must venture'; 'In the mathematics of God/ there are percentages beyond one hundred.' Margaret Avison's poems have warmed the hearts and enlarged the thinking of two generations of Canadian readers.
Contents
Volume One ForewordFrom ElsewhereThe Prairie Open Window Dirge The Butterfly Neverness The Valiant Vacationist Song but Oblique to '47 The Iconoclasts Perspective Unseasoned Diminuendo The Local and the Lakefront The Typographer's Ornate Symbol at the End of a Chapter or a Story A Parallels Poem: Hearing Letter to David Solway re his 'The Piano in the House in the Woods' Almost All Bogged Down A Thief in the Night Continued Story DesignWinter SunThe Apex Animal All Fools' Eve Dispersed Titles Chronic Prelude Not the Sweet Cicely of Gerardes Herball Civility a Bogey or Two Centuries of Canadian Cities Tennis Snow Unbroken Lineage Butterfly Bones: Sonnet against Sonnets Jonathan, O Jonathan Meeting Together of Poles and Latitudes (in Prospect) The Fallen, Fallen World Grammarian on a Lakefront Park Bench Atlantis and the Department Store The World Still Needs Death New Year's Poem Banff Hiatus From a Provincial November 23 To Professor X, Year Y The Swimmer's Moment Unfinished After-Portrait or Stages of Mourning Thaw The Artist Easter Extra-Political Intra-Political Watershed Mordent for a Melody Apocalyptic? Apocalyptics Rich Boy's Birthday through a Window Our Working Day May Be Menaced Stray Dog, near Ecully Identity Rigor Viris Rondeau Redouble Voluptuaries and Others R. I. P. On the Death of France Darte Scott (Upon the Birth of Twin Sons Who Later Died) Jael's Part Span A Conversation The Mirrored Man Birth Day A Friend's Friend Far Off from University September Street The Agnes Cleves PapersThe Dumbfounding Old ... Young... Two Mayday Selves Pace Twilight Black-White under Green: May 18, 1965 Micro-Metro Riding and Waves In Time Until Silenced: To I. A. The Mourner Many As Two July Man Words Psalm 19 Controversy A Story The Store Seeds A Child: Marginalia on an Epigraph The Absorbed For Tinkers Who Travel on Foot The Earth That Falls Away Branches Miniature Biography of One of My Father's Friends Who Died a Generation Ago In Truth First Person ... Person or A Hymn on and to the Holy Ghost Five Breaks The Word The Dumbfounding Searching and Sounding A Prayer Answered by Prayer For Dr. and Mrs. Dresser The Christian's Year in Miniature Report from the Pedestrians' Outpost A Sad Song Once Lonely Lover Janitor Working on Threshold Bestialities Canadian / Inverted Walking Behind, en Route, in Morning, in December Hot June Natural / Unnatural In a Season of Unemployment Simon: finis Christmas: Anticipation And Around Transit A Nameless One Urban Tree UnspeakableTranslationsOde to Bartok Of Tyranny, in One Breath Farm, at Dark, on the Great Plain
