The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy

Conclusion, Retrospective, and Prospective

Conclusion, Retrospective, and Prospective D.M.R. BENTLEY "We didn't know where to locate Purdy, so we couldn't ask him for some poems ...." ("Layton, Purdy, Souster, Nowlan" [18]) EW CANADIAN POETS HAVE attained the near-mythogenic status of Al Purdy and none has been accorded the dubious honour of being described as the "most," "first," and "last" Canadian poet.1 Soby 2006—several years after his great early influence, Bliss Carman, and almost in the sparkling wake of MargaretAtwood (whose ideas about Canada he disliked)—Purdy's time for a symposium in the University of Ottawa's Reappraisals series had definitely arrived. Here was a poet in need, not only of appraisal, but also of rehabilitation, for the winds of postcolonialism and postnationalism that had blown through Canadian literature for a decade and more had not been very kind to poetry per se, let alone to poetry written by a white male and regarded as distinctively Canadian. Among the many appealing aspects of the papers i. George Bowering i; Dennis Lee, "Running and Dwelling" 16; and SamSolecki, book title. 239 F 240 I D.M.R. BENTLEY presented at the Purdy symposium and gathered in this collectionare their attention to poems as such, their avoidance of ideologically driven reductionism, and their combination of insights drawn from literary theory with concerns that are usually (and often pejoratively) associated with literary history. Every reader ofPurdy will have their favourite Purdy story and poem: Purdy riding the rods to Vancouverwith dreams of Vagabondiadancing in his head; Purdy with his "buttocks balanced above ... boulders" at the mercy of snapping "Eskimo dogs" (CP93);Purdy provoking questions in the House of Commons for the Canada-Council-supported '"Friggit"'of his "blue-footed booby" (CP204);Purdy reciting "The Cariboo Horses" with a long and checker-panted leg raffishly cocked above a classroom chair.... And then there are the seemingly gangling but carefully staged and so vividly memorable poems: "Elegy for a Grandfather" ... "HomeMade Beer" . . . "Wilderness Gothic" . . . "The Country North of Belleville" . . . "Trees at the Arctic Circle" . . . "Roblin's Mills" . . . "Lament for the Dorsets" ... (the last, of course, the source of the titleof the Purdy symposium and this collection).In recordings, on film, and even more in the memories of those who knew him, Purdy's voice still rings with the unmistakable uniqueness of a true "character"—the strange, almost mournful timbre of the man with whom it was an uncomplicated pleasure to have a few beers, to bemoan the failures of the present Canadian government, to marvel at the verbal felicity of a poem by D. H. Lawrence or Dylan Thomas, a passage in Paradise Lost, or—for Purdy was ever keen to mix the high with the low (and, indeed, the mono-) brow—some such lines as "Have you seen the giant pistons / On the mighty CPR/ With the driving force ofa thousand horse? / Well, you know what pistons are." Purdy did not write these lines (they are from "Eskimo Nell") but he certainly knew and admired them, and, almost as much as anything that he did write, they convey a sense of his energy,his ribaldry,his unapologetic Canadianness, his hyper-, selfdeprecating , and sometimes self-parodic masculinity, his bellowing, chugging, moving, and near-transcontinental larger-than-lifeness. At many moments during the formal and informal events of the Purdy symposium, all of these qualities and many others that are equally characteristicof him were vitally present as a cause ofcelebration , amusement, commentary, and critique. Whether in the room in which the conference papers were delivered or the bar of the nearby hotel at which the organizers very thoughtfully parked the speakers, Purdy was a continual subject of reminiscence, discussion, and appraisal..That the materials gathered in this collection do not convey more of its rare, uplifting, and beery spirit is regrettable but inevitable; Conclusion, Retrospective, and Prospective 241 they are the products of antecedent cogitations and sober second thoughts: serious in subject, formal in tone, careful in expression, conscious of their responsibilities. But cumulativelythey do succeed well enough in capturing and communicatingthe spirit of conversation that permeated the symposium and made it for many, if not most or all, who attended, a triumph of its kind and a credit to Gerald Lynch, Shoshannah Ganz, Josephene Kealey, and their fellow organizers and helpers. Again and again the materials in the collection show that Purdy's writing comes into its own when it is...