god-like sorting

Elise Partridge: Avison is... refreshing to read in my opinion because she avoided joining one of the major movements of the 20th century, one that still holds sway in North America: confessionalism. In the Foreword, Avison pays tribute to a grade nine teacher who gave her what Avison refers to as “this valuable counsel: ‘For the next ten years do not use the first person in any poem you write.’” One author said that when Avison examines her work, she allows her “no self-pity... Her most frequent comment to me is: ‘Forget the I’s.’”

Barbara Nickel: A voice that avoids the “I” can take on an authority it otherwise wouldn’t. “The Swimmer’s Moment,” for example, opens with the sweeping statement “For everyone/The swimmer’s moment at the whirlpool comes,” and then goes on to divide people into those who will not recognize the whirlpool, and those who are “whirled into the ominous center.” Elsewhere, in another poem, that omniscient voice divides people between “Those who fling off, toss head,/Taste the bitter morning, and have at it” – and “Those who are flung off, sit/Dazed awhile, gather concentration...”

Part of the reason I’m convinced by the voice is because it’s not trying to support these observations of humanity, this god-like sorting, with personal experiences, emotions, and anecdotes. One of the benefits of having so much of Avison’s work brought together in one volume is that the distant, omniscient narrator can become a presence for the reader over a space of many poems. You come to simply accept that there is no poetic “I” here – and with that, after reading many poems, comes an acceptance of the authority of the all-knowing voice.

- Elise Partridge and Barbara Nickel in conversation about Margaret Avison's Always Now: The Collected Poems, Volume One. The whole discussion is so good that even I, an avowed confessionalist, am sharing it!

"The Wholehearted Poet: A Conversation about Margaret Avison" was originally published in Books in Canada (September 2004), and is now available in full on Barbara Nickel's website. You can read it here.