Al Purdy relates oS quest

: REACHING FOR THE BEAUFORT | SEA. An autobiography. Al Purdy. ~ (Harbor Publishing.) $26.95 -

(ie | John Moore. -. : BOOK REVIEW -

-ECEMBER. THE last.

‘leaf on the calendar,

.. like the last page of

“a book, and despite the riot- ous racket of festive merty-"

making, the end of yet: -

other. year.inevitably in-. . clines ‘one toward reflection: and self-examination. ae

ig :

book for weeks. not because it’s'a ’

zrind, but because I'don’t want it ‘0 end, so. I’ve been doling it out

ie myself as a reward for. what ©; sses for good kehavior (meeting

Christmas deadlines; etc.) ” Foitunately; Purdy has written”

exactly the kind of autobiography ‘poet should write: intense,

isodic, with only a barely ‘polite :

nod to chronology; focused on the sometimes small but meee experiences of a lifetime, and to. Hell withthe boring detailg ; hot through with bursts of

characteristic lyricism, the nar-_” fative captures the mood of.

after midnight’! conversation 50: perfectly-you'll, be looking u upto" flag down the waiter for: ‘another.

r with, most oh his ee iterary contemporaries and friends r.sod or permanently

General's Award winiier is prace- fully,-if reluctantly, easing into the eo ae Old Man of Cana-

a night still prompt him to faunch an: empty beer bottle or’, knotted fist my wa' except for the - satisfaction he'd ta ein -knowing |’ ow much the v very idea would ;

uch else about the emergence of: distinctive Canadian literature in’ his century, lies in Purdy’s often: reverent sketches of fellow") writers: Hugh Gamer,.F.R. Scott,

tving Layton, Milton Acom: Alden’:

; john Newlove, Margaret - iSOn,” Margaret Laurence; etc: He first met Margaret Atwood hen she anived at his Roblin © “some.

ae Lonsdale Avenue

da ON ITE

who he typically baited into an argument so successfully that she poured beer on him. An early

, egalitarian male, he promptly

returned the compliment and the

- ‘combat continued with beer and

’ water well into the lake. .

Years later, trapped in an airport

_ public washroom with a very

~ drunk Atwood-hating Hugh

Garner and a mickey of scotch, he

would risk both sobriety and a

possible pounding from the hard-

boiled Garner in her defence. But ultimately it’s not the insider

glimpses of Leonard Cohen as a

- silk-robed poseur, slavishly wor-

shipping Bob Dylan (Purdy sen- sibly retired to the kitchen where the beer was), that make Reaching For The Beaufort Sea such a cap- tivating book.

It’s the stories of riding the rails as a hobo in the late ‘30s, sending a cab over a cliff into the lake rather than hand it over to the bankruptcy bailiff, the shop-floor - combats in mattress factories in . Vancouver and Montreal, that

“One theme recurs, as it does in -

“his poetry. Purdy has roamed this “country like a resttess ghost, not . _ just from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but ‘north to the Beaufort :. Sea, to the permanently frozen heart of the Canadian ‘‘out- back,” in an often Quixotic per- “sonal quest for the. elusive soul of : this nation...

When he says he feels closer i in

_ Spirit to two long-dead Inuit hunt-

ers he participated in an RCAF ‘search for, than to people he meets every day, you know it’s - because he’s spent his life trying to. say in words what-no map can‘ ever hope to articulate.: . ‘Purdy’s muse has not left him,. “though God and the Canadian “Civil Code have given her ample,

.grounds.. If there is a heroine in

this self-told tale, it is his long-suf- fering wife, Eurithe, who could: ‘probably have shot him, pleaded justifiable homicide and. taken a

, probationary walk half a dozen

times.) : Al documents their lifelong ex- cruciating poverty with a poet’s ‘aplomb; one suspects her version . ‘might differ in tone somewhat. :Purdy’s'only concession to’ age is’ that he now spends his winters in: the more benign climate of Sydney, on Vancouver Island, in- ‘stead of the frozen shares of.)

. “Roblin Lake."

_ “My mind is on a few more - poems, as many more as tcan manage,’’ he.says. ‘‘Of course,

‘, More poems depend on living,

- living in its fullest sense, whatever 2 that may mean.’ wr B

if anybody knows what i ii means, o

Purdy does.

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