SOURCE: A review of Selected Poems, in The American Book Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, August-September, 1992, pp. 16, 29.

In the excerpt below, Lenhart suggests similarities between Avison's work and that of the 17th-century metaphysical and meditational poets.

I was attracted to Margaret Avison's book [Selected Poems] by the blurb that instructs readers that Avison's "roots (are) in the 17th-Century traditions of metaphysical and meditational poetry." It is a tradition that has always attracted me by its dense line, concentrated attention, baroque and often far-fetched conceits, resistance to paraphrase, and profoundly unsettled tone. Dr. Johnson described the basic strategy of metaphysical poetry as discordia concors, the violent yoking of heterogeneous ideas. Since my discovery of the metaphysical poets took place in the classroom of the inspiring Franciscan Peter Amadeus Fiore and was presided over by the critical spirit of T. S. Eliot, I've always considered metaphysical poetry part of the Catholic reaction...