Always Now (Always Now: Collected Poems) - Softcover

Avison, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889842620 ISBN 13: 9780889842625

Publisher: Porcupine's Quill, 2003

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Author

`Collected Poems sounds like a ``closing of the books,'' of my books, after a lifetime of writing, although nobody holds me to that. The process has been good: odds and ends tided up and the lot put in order. Re-reading has helped put all these years' output into perspective for me. If any reader wonders about certain trees or their place in this forest, my survey may serve him as well.'

-- from Margaret Avison's `Foreword'

About the Author

One of Canada's most respected poets, Margaret Avison was born in Galt, Ontario, lived in Western Canada in her childhood, and then in Toronto. In a productive career that stretched back to the 1940s, she produced seven books of poems, including her first collection, Winter Sun (1960), which she assembled in Chicago while she was there on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and which won the Governor General's Award. No Time (Lancelot Press), a work that focussed on her interest in spiritual discovery and moral and religious values, also won the Governor General's Award for 1990. Avison's published poetry up to 2002 was gathered into Always Now: the Collected Poems (Porcupine's Quill, 2003), including Concrete and Wild Carrot which won the 2003 Griffin Prize. Her most recent book, Listening, Last Poems, was published in 2009 by McClelland & Stewart.

Margaret Avison was the recipient of many awards including the Order of Canada and three honorary doctorates.

Edition details

• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0889842620
• ISBN 13: 9780889842625
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256