Listening
The Last Poems of Margaret Avison
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
Margaret Avison was widely acknowledged as one of Canada’s foremost poets. Taut, sublime, subtle, and crystalline, the poems in her brilliant new collection, published posthumously, showcase Avison at her best, and constitute the final chapter in an extraordinary artistic legacy that spanned more than forty years.
Margaret Avison was widely acknowledged as one of Canada’s foremost poets. Taut, sublime, subtle, and crystalline, the poems in her brilliant new collection, published posthumously, showcase Avison at her best, and constitute the final chapter in an extraordinary artistic legacy that spanned more than forty years.
READ AN EXCERPT
August. Reading
From lamplight on a glossy page
my eyes lift: now not
insects’ footprints along
gleamy paper, but a
wash of diluted, cold
green tea with
dust-bunny clouds afloat
southward, grape-tinted once but
fast fading. A
last lick of
ivory light tinctures
a tall, very far...
From lamplight on a glossy page
my eyes lift: now not
insects’ footprints along
gleamy paper, but a
wash of diluted, cold
green tea with
dust-bunny clouds afloat
southward, grape-tinted once but
fast fading. A
last lick of
ivory light tinctures
a tall, very far...
PRAISE FOR
"The radiant authority of Avison’s art, everywhere on display in this affective as well as effective volume, derives from a life spent observing, assimilating, listening and, most crucially, taking note of all that fills her senses. She opens her heart to the universe and, in so doing, finds fulfilment within its wondrous and often incomprehensibly wicked ways."
— Judith Fitzgerald, Globe and Mail
— Judith Fitzgerald, Globe and Mail