by Howard White
This went on all winter. In the spring
they say the first thing that appeared out of the melting snow
under Purdy’s window was a beer bottle
and then another, as one by one
a whole term’s pile of empties was uncovered
and they say the students called them
Purdy’s crocuses.
Since hearing this, wherever I drive
—west along 17 from Sudbury
across the Wawa wilderness, or east
on 16 through Jasper from Tête Jaune Cache—
I don’t mind so much the dozens of empty beer bottles
strewn in ones and twos beside the asphalt, sometimes accompanied
by water-soaked bits of cardboard from their cases
but mostly not. I like to think
what the poet planted in Montreal
has taken hold, spread coast-to-coast
like a new brand of cigar or rabbits in Australia:
slowly the shoulders of the main highways, and the ditches
along every back road in Canada
are filling with the brown blooms of Purdy’s crocuses.
Gregory Betts
Shoulders Descending
Al Purdy pushed me down the stairs,
his massive hands, the kind you make
oversized statues of, warped their vein-
laden declamation around my once-
broken collar bone, while his fingers
caress the ridge of bone. I touch posters.
Exhale into the open street night below.
I’ve never seen anything like it, he says,
as we step down from the Imperial Pub,
stutter stepping like mournful elephants
retreating from a burial, bush-whacked
alligator pie-eyed, stoners from Rochdale,
his long arms trailing between us, something
British Columbian, syllables that slur. We kick dirt
over the evening, his second hand
ticking into my neck. I’ve been in a lot
of bars, you know, even poetry.
I’ve seen fights, seen people fucking,
I’ve seen poets read essays they had no
right to read. The freedom to destroy.
We stumble, I grasp the rail
(down to its last spike), as we bump and
plough awkwardly down to Dundas. I am
supporting too much of Canadian literature
on my shoulders. There would be consequences
if I were to slip. Broken bones heal, but
national literatures are much more fragile.
Did you know, he says suddenly, that the
stirrup-shaped bone in your middle ear
is the smallest one in your body? A broken
one’s never been found, so small.
We pause for cadence, as if to listen to
its lack of size,
only hear the gentle scratch
of Dennis Lee signing papers
back in the bar. Something indelible.
When we make it to Toronto, his hand
quickly cups my head. He winks, walks off
to Halifax in a gale of snow faded caribou,
a lethal puff of smoke from a diesel thug,
the city unfolds like a rolled-up mattress,
folds back up and ferries off the way words
sometimes hover sometimes disappear altogether.
K.V. Skene
As the Days and Nights Join Hands
after “The Dead Poet,” Al Purdy
hold onto our self-absorbed selves
brisk as whisky-jack weather strong
as a vagabond’s song broken
as last year’s wedding vows
while our bright little Wi-Fi lights
wink with the superior insight
of fraught battles
and innovative ways of becoming
and we speak hope in its fullness
a language of uncertain syntax
and unsustainable joy
as if in this one inarticulate moment
our every word will become
a light unto the world.
Susan McMaster
How I Think of Al
—as he walked right into it
in the packed and beery bars,
as he taunted the young poet,
why do it, if you find it so hard,
as he barked his knuckles,
scarred his hands,
pulling nails from old planks
to bang together a home,
as after four months
of cold and dirt and dark
by my own frozen lake
in my own dank cabin,
I heard death yodel,
as he returned time and again
to the one who let him in
when his wanderings ran out,
as I realize on this night
of dead ashes and yellow moon—
Al, you’re not my muse.
But some part of you
is stuck in my words
as they rise from the cedars
with mosquito buzz and night hawk,
as they fall into my hands
in the Gatineau hills
cold and soft as snow.
I think of you, Al,
as you go.
George Bowering
At the Cecil Hotel
translation of Al Purdy’s “At the Quinte Hotel”
I am writing
I am writing another goddam poem
about drinking beer
and it’s clearly obvious that I’m an artist
And I figure that the bartender is an artist as well
so I show him my beer poem draft
mainly the part about the draft
he poured me that tastes a lot
like a Milton Acorn poem
But it seems that the bartender
is more into nonfiction prose
the way he turns his back
and lets out an anapestic fart
Across the semidark room
two women with large arms
and large tattoos on their arms
are drinking ale and writing poems
They pay no attention
to the two bony guys slugging each other
with grimy fists. “Pat Lane
couldn’t carry Newlove’s jockstrap!”
says one bony guy as he slips
in the beer and blood on the floor
and the other guy kicks him in the ear
After a while the guy picks himself up
and staggers over to his table
and sits down with a beer and a book of poems
Now the beer in my belly
is looking for a way out
but I have to pass the other bony guy
on my way to the dimly lit pisser
I can’t help myself
being an artist and all
I told him “Dorothy Livesay could wipe the floor
with Newlove and Lane and Alden Nowlan!”
“Wanna come outside and say that?” he says
so I go outside and say it again
He takes a wild swing and falls down
and I sit on his head
which is face down in the parking lot
“Out here in Vancouver the poets
make love, not war!” I instruct him
He lifts his hand in a peace sign
and I let him up because I’m an artist
When we get
back inside
there’s a guy with a big bony nose
and a bag full of mimeographed poems
“A dollar a poem,” he says
“or I will read you five pages for a beer!”
I ask him what kind of poems they are
and he says “Immutable, inscrutable, marsupial!”
I buy five of them and hand him a beer
because I’ve heard of this guy
He rides a bicycle all over town
and jams mimeographed poems in mail slots
He has recorded every poetry reading
ever given in this town
“Welcome to the Cecil!” he says to me
“I can tell that you are an artist
writing poems in a beer parlour—
you are contumacious, salubrious, bituminous!”
And he was out the door and off on his bike
before I could show him
my latest occasional poem
with him in it, him and beer and blood
Now I am an artist without a dime
an artist without a beer
and likely to remain that way.
Inspiration
F.R. Scott
This Inn is Free
I will arise and go now, and go to Roblin Lake,
To a cottage NORTH OF SUMMER, with PURDY on the door.
I’ll arm myself with hard tack, some rat-poison, and steak,
And sleep alone on a hard-wood floor.
When dawn comes through the window, with bird-song à la crow,
I’ll rise and light my candle, and search for things I love,
And wrapping round my blanket, to warm me as I go
I’ll creep my way to the unlit stove.
When AL comes down to join me, I’ll greet him with a grin.
My books will all be ready, my voice will be so sure,
That though he’ll try reciting before I can begin
I’ll blast him with my OVERTURE.
Then will the lists be open, the poems laid on the line.
Before my EYE OF THE NEEDLE, his skill shall not prevail,
Though he try to make me sodden with gallons of WILD GRAPE WINE,
And set his CARIBOO HORSES on my tail.
Oh I can’t wait to visit the igloo of the soul
Where Acorns, Birneys, Newloves, and bards of equal fame
Have plastered both themselves and every leaking hole
And warmed their hearts at PURDY’s flame.
Kate Braid
Say the Names
after Al Purdy
Say abrasive.
Say abatjour, abutment and adze eye.
Say aggregate and air-dried cement, say
alabaster anchor blocks, anhydrous lime and
antemion. Say apprentice, with an arabesque.
Say arris at the place two edges meet and
eyes up to the architrave of the door
and the artisan who built it.
Say ashlar and auger, avoirdupois and azimuth.
Now bridge to badigeon and ball peen,
to beams and barefaced tenons.
Embrace barefoot joints and bargeboards,
bezel and batter board.
Chant bay, bead and reel and bead and butt molding,
bell-hanger’s bit.
Belay us a benchmark, bevel to bias.
Don’t stop now—say bleeding tile, blind mortise,
block and tackle. Bring on board and batten, bolts
and bond stones.
Then there’s buck and built-up beams and
burl, butt hinge and still
we’re only on the b’s because this building,
this building is concrete bloody poetry, please!
Magie Dominic
Standing on a Newfoundland Cliff
(Inspired by “Trees at the Arctic Circle”)
The breeze had changed to a robust wind,
I could feel it across my shoulders. It was rushing the clouds.
Waves below were crashing on ancient stones
that were long ago torn from the cliffs;
sea foam littered the beach.
The sky was bursting with colors I’d never seen in my life.
Mauve and cerise and splashes of charcoal
crisscrossed the sky like chalk marks left by a child.
The air felt like silver.
Wind raged around me and ripped through the tuckamore trees,
those swirling dervishes that inhabit the tops
of Newfoundland cliffs,
branches and limbs gone wild,
outliving the elements.
Tuckamores are unique to Newfoundland;
they challenge torturous storms
and the waves crashing below them;
defy the wind and its violence,
and when denied the chance to grow upward,
in an act of survival and daring,
they simply grow sideways.
I stood alone at the top of the cliff that day,
waves crashing below,
a furious wind engulfing me and the tuckamores,
and I inhaled their courage and daring.
I reclaimed a part of myself.
I devoured a piece of the cliff that day;
a taste of wildness and strength; of vastness;
of forest and storms.
Alchemy.
Bruce Cockburn
3 Al Purdys
Stand in the swaying boxcar doorway
moving east away from the sunset and
after a while the eyes digest a country and
the belly perceives a mapmaker’s vision
in dust and dirt on the face and hands here
its smell drawn deep through the nostrils down
to the lungs and spurts through the bloodstream
campaigns in the lower intestine and
chants love songs to the kidneys
After a while there is no arrival and
no departure possible any more
you are where you were always going
and the shape of home is under your fingernails.
I’m a product of some parents of the sort that shouldn’t breed
didn’t get much schooling past learning how to read
got the poetry bug in some forgotten institution
when first I did embark on my career of destitution
the beauty of language set a hook in my soul
me like a breadcrust soaking soup from a bowl
You can call this a rant but I declare I declaim
Al Purdy’s poems are the name of the game
the winds of fate blow where they will
I’ll give you 3 Al Purdy’s for a twenty dollar bill
Porkers in the counting house counting out the bacon
matter’s getting darker in the universe they’re making
they love the little guy until they get a better offer
with the dollar getting smaller they can fit more in their coffers
and the doings on the corner neither sung nor seen
they’re circling the shopping carts at Sherbourne and Queen
I resemble that assembly but I’m not the same
Al Purdy’s poems are the name of my game
the winds of fate blow where they will
I’ll give you 3 Al Purdy’s for a twenty dollar bill
You can spit on the prophet but respect the word
I’ve got some lines I want to spin you that you ought to have heard
the winds of fate blow where they will
I’ll give you 3 Al Purdy’s for a twe
nty dollar bill
the winds of fate blow where they will
I’ll give you 3 Al Purdy’s for a twenty dollar bill
And after the essence of everything
had exchanged itself for words and became
another being and could even be summoned
from the far distance we chanted a spell of names
and we said “mountain be our friend”
and we said “River guard us from enemies”
And we said what it seemed the gods themselves
might say if we had dreamed them and they
had dreamed us from their high places
and they spoke to us in the forest
from the river and the mountain
and the mouths of the ochre-painted dead
had speech again and the waters
spoke and the speech had words
and our children remembered
Kath MacLean
Spring at Roblin Lake
Speaking sharply, her voice rising to a hiss, Wind cursed Spring for her late arrival. All night she wailed. By morning, trees were covered in spit. Buds that might have bloomed, curled into themselves, maples, branches heavy with snow, sagged & leaning towards the little cottage, were suddenly old—
Caught in the bramble, thorns pricked, lines were drawn; limbs cast about—
there were casualties, yes. Twigs, leaves, breezy bombs circled round the shed, flung
the outhouse door open, beat it senseless. Cedars aching with loss bent in prayer, but what to pray?
Forgiveness,
mercy,
Love?
No man’s land. Raphael wounded, offered no resolution, no comfort, no joy—
Lilacs, tender & fair, huddled by the drive, quivering, faded from mauve to white. Swans blessed the lake, caressed its silken cheek, then in a flurry of feathers were gone. Dog found curses in the grass, crushed, misshapen, forgotten nuts, dried shells, September’s spent leaves & other mementos of the living dead. Wind swayed, & snapping the tulips’ yellow heads, choked the poetic, strangled Romanticism, blew a breath of beer caps from the Quinte—
Footnotes to a forgotten story: warmer climes, summer stars, young love, songbirds singing—But robins don’t sing & sparrows choking, cough a note or two. Herons on spindly legs beat their wings against the light until morning’s eyes shine black. The day undone, seeds scatter on the back deck, pods. What might have been long ago, no longer means—
Horses, dogs, a marten sniffs beneath my window, follows what can’t be seen: messages from beyond, air, a whispering statue, a girl turned stone. Lifting the cottage, separating earth, rock, fall face first into Roblin Lake, surface in the moment, then claw about the edges of shore. Dead, or alive, blessing Night, who gives close encounters, with things, people, things—