The snowflow
nearly-April releases melting bright.
Then a darkdown
needles and shells the pools.
Swepth of suncoursing sky
steeps us in
salmon-stream
crop-green
rhubarb-coloured shrub-tips:
everything waits for the
lilacs, heaped tumbling — and their warm
licorice perfume.
—Margaret Avison
My Avison volumes came today (isn't the internet wonderful?), and to celebrate I'm quoting the first poem in Always Now, Volume Two
In case you're wondering, suncoursing is a hapax as far as Google knows, snowflow and darkdown get a fair number of hits although they are not actual words, and swepth is such a frequent typo Google isn't much help. But Heather Pyrcz, in a brief discussion of Avison here, calls it a "neologism," which sounds right to me. (Pyrcz also mentions that Avison studied with the Black Mountain poets, which helps explain why she uses words so strikingly.)
Posted by languagehat at April 7, 2006 03:39 PMThanks for this. She was a good friend of my husband's family.
Posted by: Suzanne McCarthy at April 7, 2006 06:02 PMReally! Lucky them. (I trust your past tense refers to the friendship having faded; as far as I know, she's still alive and writing.)
Posted by: language hat at April 7, 2006 06:32 PMShe was closest friends with a member of his family who died, hence the past tense.
Posted by: Suzanne McCarthy at April 8, 2006 12:49 AMmore margaret avison! ~ thanks for introducing me to this poet,
and for the interesting link to the Black Mountain poets - that was an aha moment for me
Posted by: kasturi at April 9, 2006 12:54 PMBeautiful...
Posted by: Katrina at April 10, 2006 03:08 AMI wonder what month it might be: March?
When do lilacs bloom over there? In April, judging by the "nearly-April" feeling and LH's remarks, but is this timing uniform across North America?
Posted by: Alexei at April 12, 2006 03:22 AM