The Ivory Thought

Gerald Lynch, Shoshannah Ganz, Josephene Kealey

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780776618319
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

If one poet can be said to be the Canadian poet, that poet is Al Purdy (1918–2000). Numerous eminent scholars and writers have attested to this pre-eminent status. George Bowering described him as "the world's most Canadian poet" (1970), while Sam Solecki titled his book-length study of Purdy The Last Canadian Poet (1999). In The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy, a group of seventeen scholars, critics, writers, and educators appraise and reappraise Purdy's contribution to English literature. They explore Purdy's continuing significance to contemporary writers; the life he dedicated to literature and the persona he crafted; the influences acting on his development as a poet; the ongoing scholarly projects of editing and publishing his writing; particular poems and individual books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; and the larger themes in his work, such as the Canadian North and the predominant importance of place. In addition, two contemporary poets pay tribute with original poems.

Index

Note: AP refers to Al Purdy

A

A-bomb see “bomb poems”

A-frame house, 107–108, 177, 208, 215

Aboriginal peoples, 124n7, 165–167, 202

“About Being a Member of Our

Armed Forces” (WGW, AP), 95

accident, 105, 113

Acorn, Milton, 52

“Across the Mary River …” (SB, AP), 132–133

“Adobe” (AP), 78

Agawa, 165

“The Age of Machines” (EE, Purdy), 33

Air Force, 31, 34–35, 37, 42, 44–45, 93, 95

Al Purdy (Bowering), 36, 79, 127, 243

“Al Purdy, Sam Solecki, and the Poetics of the 1960s” (Davey), 181n8

“Al Purdy’s Poetry: Openings” (Dragland), 174n1

amateurism, 169–170

ambiguous feelings, 185–186

Ameliasburgh, Ontario, 9, 107, 111, 177, 215, 216

ancestors See Purdy, Al, family

animals

in Al Purdy’s works, 46–47, 55–58, 121–123, 125, 225

bones of, 203

dialogue with, 128

ghosts of, 203

man as, 59

See also birds

annotations, 81

anthologies, 1 21n3, 221–222

anthropomorphism, 122, 123, 148, 225

apophasis, 208–209

archaeology 64n1, 69–70, 108, 159, 205

archives, 13n1, 17, 18, 22, 82, 88, 177

arctic see North

“Arctic Places” (CP, Brown), 133–134

“Arctic Rhododendrons” (AP), 207

“Arctic Romance” (SD, AP), 131n12

art

artistic control, 106

function of, 59–61, 96–97, 159, 160–161, 207

as living thing, 60, 159–160, 196, 199

magic of, 161

and morals, 101

painting, 120, 165–166, 205–206

permanent, 205–206

power of, 167, 169, 170

process, 160–161

relationship with humans, 192

and war, 96–97

See also artifacts; the picturesque

artifacts, 60, 159, 167, 191–192, 202–205. See also art

“Artist’s Model” (AP), 78

“At Evergreen Cemetery” (CLL, AP), 177

“At the Athenian Market” (BR, Solecki and AP), 194, 20...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Reference Key
• Introduction
• Ingredients for Certain Poems by Al Purdy
• Materials for a Biography of Al Purdy
• Unremembered and Learning Much: LAC Alfred W. Purdy
• Ai Purdy: Ivory Thots and the Last Romantic
• Purdy among the Tombs
• Beyond Forgetting: Editing Purdy] Purdy Editing
• ‘I couldn’t write it like that anyway’: Al Purdy’s Hiroshima Poems
• Purdy’s Ruins: In Search of Owen Roblin, Literary Power, and the Poetics of the Picturesque
• Arctic Al: Purdy’s Humanist Vision of the North
• Good People
• ‘Living in a Land of Giants’: Locating and Sustaining Boyhood
• ‘Kind of ludicrous or kind of beautiful I guess’: Al Purdy’s Rhetoric of Failure
• Song and Silence in Al Purdy’s Family Elegies
• ‘Buried bones and ornaments and stuff: Purdy’s Reliquary Poetics
• On Trying to Wear Al’s Shirts
• Reflections on a Dynamic Collaboration
• Al Purdy, Sam Solecki, and Canadian Tradition
• Conclusion, Retrospective, and Prospective
• Select Bibliography of Secondary Materials
• Contributors
• Index
• Footnotes