Persevering witness : the poetry of Margaret Avison / Elizabeth Davey ; Foreword by David A. Kent.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davey, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Ann), author.

Contributor:

Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Avison, Margaret, 1918-2007--Poetry--Criticism and interpretation.

Avison, Margaret.

Avison, Margaret, 1918-2007.

Canadian poetry.

Christian poetry.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Christian poetry.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 343 pages ; 23 cm

Other Title:

'A kind of perseverance' : Margaret Avison's poetry as Christian witness.

Place of Publication:

Eugene, Oregon : Pickwick Publications, [2016]

Summary:

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."

Contents:

Chapter 1 With or Against the Grain?: Avison's Poetry as Christian Witness 1

Chapter 2 Towards an Understanding of Christian Witness 34

Chapter 3 "Come and See": "All Lookings Forth at the Implicit Touch" 76

Chapter 4 "Come and See": Creatureliness and Imaging God 133

Chapter 5 "Come and See": "Truth Radiantly Here" 165

Chapter 6 "Go and Tell": The Missionary Impulse in Avison's Poetry 212.

Notes:

Includes bibliographic references and index.

Originally published as a dessertation for Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and University of Wales in 2010 under the title: 'A kind of perseverance' : Margaret Avison's poetry as Christian witness.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

ISBN:

9781498223928

1498223923

OCLC:

950893816

Publisher Number:

99969013159