
A Persevering Witness
The Poetry of Margaret Avison
Elizabeth Davey(Author)
Wipf & Stock Publishers
Published on 16. May 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-1-4982-2392-8 (ISBN)
Description
Margaret Avison, one of Canada's premier poets, is a highly sophisticated and self-conscious writer, both charming and intimidating at the same time. She calls to mind her more famous predecessors--the religious poets George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot--as she vigorously engages both heart and intellect. ""She has forged a way to write against the grain, some of the most humane, sweet and profound poetry of our time,"" write the judges of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Becoming a Christian in her mid-forties, her life and her vocation were transformed and her lyrics record that shift. In ""Muse of Danger,"" she writes to Christian college students, ""But in His strange and marvelous mercy, God nonetheless lets the believer take a necessary place as a living witness in behavior with family and classmate and stranger, in conversation, or in a poem."" How she blends her twin passions of poetry and Christian faith becomes a story of a kind of perseverance.
Readers who respond with understanding and empathy recognize both the distinctive mystery of poetic witness and the mystery inherent in Christ's saving work to which it points. Her enduring witness becomes an implicit call for us to persevere in what Avison identifies as the ""mix of resurrection life and marred everyday living.""
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Eugene
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
533 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4982-2392-8 (9781498223928)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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E-Book
05/2016
Wipf and Stock Publishers
€40.99
Available for download
Persons
Elizabeth Davey is Associate Professor of English at Tyndale University College in Toronto, Ontario. She is coauthor of Climbing the Spiritual Mountain (2014).