Community of Readers

Poet Sarah Klassen and I are friends. Early on in our relationship - we met about a year after I moved to Winnipeg – we found we had a shared interest in the poetry of Margaret Avison. In fact, Sarah has reviewed Margaret’s books and is quoted on the back of Always Now, Vol. 2. When I told Sarah I was writing this blog, she told me about articles she had about Margaret and her poetry that might help me. We agreed to meet at Stella’s café in my neighborhood. On Thursday afternoon, I rode my bike down to Stella’s and parked it in a rack by a nearby grocery store.

Sarah had a few articles for me like John Barton’s essay “Fluid Epiphanies: Margaret Avison’s “The Swimmer’s Moment,” from Arc and an interview with Margaret entitled “A Conversation with Margaret Avison” conducted by D.S. Martin for Image magazine. There was also another essay of literary criticism on Margaret’s poem “Dispersed Titles,” a poem which deals with Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Looking at the latter made me feel a little overwhelmed and reminded me of the day I had spent at the archive a week earlier. There was so much stuff on Margaret’s poetry – theses, articles, essays – because Margaret’s poetry is, to put it bluntly, dense. For the literary scholar, there is much to dwell on and one could be drawn tantalizingly into an analysis of the work without end. And to somehow not do so, might make one appear slight in one’s admiration for the poems and poet – sycophantic and deferential – in ways that had not fundamentally grappled with the art and intent of the work. Sarah recounted to me a story of a friend who had seen Margaret once and told her that on occasion, she found Margaret’s poems difficult and sometimes hard to understand. And Margaret replied that in that case, the poems had failed. By ‘failed’, I imagine she meant failed in its intent to communicate meaning. I myself have not ‘understood’ all of Margaret’s poems and don’t pretend to. Some of them are obscure and difficult. But there are ones, when they’re just plain good, that sing with poetic clarity. In one of Margaret’s correspondences with a writer, she speaks of wanting to be known for those poems that strike a chord in the reader that begets awe – a sort of self-less silent awe – as if the poet has simply said it and there is nothing more to add. A moment where poet and reader have communed. That was what happened to me when I read “The Swimmer’s Moment,” and evidently, the same poem struck John Barton. “Margaret Avison’s “The Swimmer’s Moment” has haunted me for thirty years.” he writes.

Sarah herself writes in her review of Always Now, Vol. 1 that Margaret’s work “challenges her readers, who, unless, they are as willing as the poet to be rigorously attentive may get bogged down in ideas often conveyed through allusion and expressed in tightly compressed syntax.” It’s the getting-bogged-down-in-ideas that is the scholar’s particular predicament, but for a poet reading the poetry, this may not be so much of a concern. Either the allusions or images strike a chord, or they don’t. There’s no argument that Margaret’s work can be exceedingly ‘intellectual,’ as in “Dispersed Titles” but the poet there – to rob deliciously from that poem these lines – is “an intellect/created into world, [was] wounded with whispers from a single oak tree.” (AN, vol. 1, p. 57) There’s that lovely Avisonesque syntax again – oh, to be an ‘intellect/ created’ and alliteratively ‘wounded with whispers’!

D.S. Martin’s interview with Margaret in Image was published after the appearance of Always Now and is therefore more recent than mine. There’s much to be gleaned from the article about Margaret’s faith and poetics. I found there a recounting of her conversion experience in which she threw her Bible across the room, telling God “Okay, take everything then!” when she at last, was compelled to give up what was so precious to her, her poetry. But later, she discovers that such a sacrifice is unnecessary, experiencing that ‘added unto you’ aspect of scripture that so aptly follows Christ’s command to “Seek ye first the kingdom.” And so, the poetry was not given up, but further enhanced and enriched. And now, too, there was a fresh new audience for it – those who sought after an articulation of their Christian experience in poetic terms that were not ‘sentimental nor preachy’ as Sarah Klassen puts it. Here now was a new community of readers for Margaret’s work.

Sarah and I are part of that community of readers. And together, we met and ‘communed’ over Margaret as I had with Tim Lilburn a week previous. I thank Margaret for these moments of companionship instigated by her poetry. I came out of that coffee shop exhilarated by our talk and eager to read the articles. When I got back to my bike, I discovered to my delight that someone had stuck a flower in my handlebars. I tossed the articles Sarah had given me into my basket and rode off, happily feted on my journey by that one gracious act by a stranger.