Not Yet But Still

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Margaret Avison’s first volume of poems, Winter Sun, appeared in 1960,
by which time she was already, for a small group of discerning readers,
a highly regarded poet in the United States as well as in Canada. Her
poems were difficult in both argument and allusion, but fitted well, as
the title suggests, into the “Waste Land” ethos of modernism.

Not long after Winter Sun was published, Avison underwent an experience
that led her to embrace Christianity, and her poetry from The
Dumbfounding (1966) onwards has been predominantly religious in
character. Since then, her references have tended to become primarily if
not exclusively biblical, and many poems take the form of meditations
arising out of scriptural texts. Nonetheless, while her later poetry is
more direct, it has not become any more accessible to the average
reader, since these same years have seen a distressing collapse in
general religious awareness and understanding.

The present collection follows the trend set by its predecessors,
sunblue (1978) and No Time (1989). Readers who admired these volumes are
likely to respond positively to this one. For me, however, while some of
these poems work, many do not. Too often I get the impression that the
thought is everything and that, in the words of Eliot’s “East
Coker,” “the poetry does not matter.” A curious prosaic quality
pervades much of this verse. This is particularly true of the final and
most ambitious poem, about Job; as with Archibald Macleish’s J.B., I
find the poet’s words tame in comparison with the original.

Avison’s passionate conviction and seriousness of purpose are not in
doubt. But, more than is the case with most poets, readers have to be on
the poet’s wavelength to get the full force of these poems. For me
they worked only fitfully; clearly, however, others should sample them
for themselves.