A Kind of Perseverance: The Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University - Softcover

Avison, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889843260 ISBN 13: 9780889843264

Publisher: Porcupine's Quill Inc.,Canada, 2010

Synopsis

In "A Kind of Perseverance" Margaret Avison shares with readers two lectures she gave at the University of Waterloo in 1993 -- Misunderstanding is Damaging' and Understanding is Costly'. Thoughtfully and with precision she tells of her journey, often unfocussed, that led finally to the Christian conversion that is central to an understanding of her poetry.

About this title

Review

Avison breaks and cracks the poetic line until there is no comfort or softness left in a poetry that relentlessly searches.'--The Canada Council

In editing the unfinished manuscript of Avison's autobiography and reissuing her 1993 Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University, Stan Dragland and Joan Eichner, Avison's long-time friend and editorial assistant, have provided a fascinating journey through the allusive prose of a strong and private poet.... The Pascal Lectures at the University of Waterloo are Avison's most overt reflection on the relationship of faith to academic study. In talks entitled Misunderstanding is Damaging'' and Understanding is Costly, '' one of her key propositions is that the growing process is dangerous, and essential.'' Avison argues that growth in faith and growth in academic learning must struggle with one another: We are of our time, not outside it; we are in the miasma of this violent, headlong, desperate, fragmenting world, '' but [the more we listen to each other across the seeming barriers ... the more our categories and distinctions dwindle, if a search for God's truth is our concern.'' By a deft sleight of hand, Avison asserts that it is those who evade Christ and who ignore the Bible who are in the greatest danger of misunderstanding. The metaphors of scripture spill out into the metaphors of her poetic voice: the great paradox is that when Christ delivers a person, it is a jail-break out of lawlessness into freedom.'' '--Deborah C. Bowen "Canadian Literature "

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 has since lived in Toronto. In a productive career that stretches back to the 1940s, she has produced seven books of poems, including her first collection, "Winter Sun" (1960), which she selected in Chicago when she was there on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and which won the Governor General's Award.

Stan Dragland is originally from Alberta and now lives in St. John's, Newfoundland. He was educated at The University of Alberta and Queen's University and is Professor Emeritus, Department of English, at The University of Western Ontario. He is the founder of Brick Magazine and Brick Books, and is still active with the latter. Among his books are Wilson MacDonald's Western Tour (critical collage), Peckertracks (novel), Journeys Through Bookland and Other Passages (fiction and non-fiction), The Bees of the Invisible: Essays in English Canadian Writing, Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (criticism), Apocrypha: Further Journeys (non- fiction), Stormy Weather: Foursomes (prose poems) and The Drowned Lands (novel). Most recently he is the author of DEEP TOO (BookThug, 2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill Inc.,Canada
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0889843260
• ISBN 13: 9780889843264
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 56