Waiting for the Sun: Poetics/Theology/Rhetoric in Margaret Avison’s Sun

Margaret Avison has produced a remarkable, though small, body of work. She is a subtle and accomplished poet, yet one about whose work relatively little has been written. Her reticence and modest output however, may have less to do with this limited critical attention than the Christian orientation of her poetry. Waiting for the Son marks a turning-point in criticism of the work of Margaret Avison. David Mazoff brilliantly argues an integrated vision, where there is a sure alliance between form and content, between poetic technique and religious intent. By focusing on the poems in sunblue, which are more openly and obviously religious, Mazoff celebrates the wit, intertextuality and sacramental poetics that infuse all of Avison’s work.