Margaret Avison, one of Canada's premier poets, is a highly sophisticated and self-conscious writer, both charming and intimidating at the same time. She calls to mind her more famous predecessors--the religious poets George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot--as she vigorously engages both heart and intellect. ""She has forged a way to write against the grain, some of the most humane, sweet and profound poetry of our time,"" write the judges of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize. Becoming a Christian in her mid-forties, her life and her vocation were transformed and her lyrics record...