Two Purdys

A Double Portrait

Brian Purdy

• Publisher: Pottersfield Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781990770371
• eBook ISBN: 9781990770388
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Brian Purdy has – almost from his beginnings – been a reader and a writer, but he's rarely published. In this book, he offers a unique collection, stating: "These are a son's poems for and about his father. At the same time, they are a poet's word picture of another poet – a man of highly individual character, deeply respected and sorely missed..." The son manages to capture the larger-than-life quality of his father Al Purdy in this arrangement of poems about the man who lived in the famous A-Frame in Ameliasburgh, Ontario, a place many say was built with the assistance of half of Canada's poets. Brian began writing before he established contact with his biological father. He spent almost seven decades studying poetry and poets without any idea of the significance of his parentage. At sixteen, he discovered his father was not dead – as he'd been told – in a newspaper article about the man and his poetry. He confronted his mother and, after much family discussion, his first contact with Al Purdy was initiated. In Two Purdys Brian captures both the man who came through the tavern door at his first meeting and the man who left this world decades later. This "double portrait plumbs sorrow even as it reaches toward jubilation with love and honour sidling up to pain and suffering. In his poems, he captures the mannerisms and speech patterns of his iconic father mixed with his own. Many fans of Al willfully denied Brian was Al's son, offering taunts, jibes, and challenges to change his last name. This book reveals a man few truly understood, though the son's portrait does not gloss over his father's faults and foibles, or excuse them. Still, father-love shines through clearly in these pages. Brian's several approaches – whether prose essays, metrical verse, autobiographical poems, or mythical vision in his lyrical free form poetry – reveal reconciliation in a continual dialogue with his father. Al Purdy's no longer with us, but he transcends his physical self in these pages through his son's innovative approach to a memoir. Al's A-frame is now a writing retreat. Brian knew it while his father still lived there. Dip into this book and you may dip your toes into Roblin Lake at the edge of that storied property. This is a beautiful, if haunting memoir by a most worthy poet.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Genesis of the Poems
• Prologue: Darkness and Silence
• The A-Frame
• Advice to Searchers
• An Agitator: The Mattress Factory
• A.W.P. (Alfred Wellington Purdy): First Meeting, Basel’s Tavern, Toronto
• Echoes, Unforgotten
• Typewriter Instrumentalist
• Al & Milton – Hammering Ice
• On Hereditary Gifts of Sometime Magic
• Thieve$ Like U$
• Father/Cadillac
• Times Alone Together
• Father and Son Pool
• Al & Bukowski – Gunslingers
• Bookmen Knew Him
• Geometry in Motion
• Petroglyphs & Poems: Between and Beyond
• Traveller in Time & Space
• Boy With a Stick: (Sensitive with a difference)
• Loki, Father of Mischief
• Defender of the Faith, Blue Boobies and All
• Visiting Al and Eurithe in Sidney, B.C.
• The Clouded Negative
• The Wind
• The Badge of a Thinking Man
• The Work Shed
• Another Stood in Your Place
• In the Cellar
• The Test
• Goddamn It
• In Darkness of Ancestral Blood
• Breeds
• Nervously Smiling
• A.W.P. as Petty Thief
• And So On
• The Best of Us
• The Last Running Ford Sedan
• Prayer for You and Anyone
• Can-do Pater
• Relics
• At the A-frame: Lost Letter Department
• The Bargain
• For Jim Purdy
• Presumptive Bestiary
• The Treasure
• The Garage/Guest House
• A Father’s Goodbye
• Speaking in Voices
• Leaving the Room on the Arm of Friends (Assisted Suicide)
• Be With Me ...
• Ahem
• Fireworks During the Trojan Wars for a Semi-Historical Father
• Epilogue: The Rise of an “Underman”
• Acknowledgements
• Author Biography