In Margaret Avison's poems, images of confinement and liberation are insistently present, and present in a special relation. The poet may be seen as working toward a vision in which this irony can be recognized; full recognition of the irony, that the individual is responsible for his/her own imprisonment, could make it possible to accept confinement as a necessary, salutary condition of self-definition. Poems discussed include "Snow," "Perspective," The Valiant Vacationist," and "Voluptuaries and Others.
