Poems for all the Annettes

by Al Purdy

Originally published by Contact Press in 1962, then later by House of Anansi in 1967, and again in a revised, expanded edition in 1972, Poems for All the Annettes stands as one of the essential documents of the great Al Purdy’s career. So many beloved poems are here—"At Roblin Lake," "At the Quinte Hotel"—but also so many undiscovered gems and treasures. It is at once the perfect introduction to this remarkable poet’s work and a collection rich and deep enough to satisfy even the experienced Purdy fan. This edition reproduces the final, expanded text of the 1972 edition, and features a brilliant new introduction by poet and novelist Steven Heighton, who knew Purdy well.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

108 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Alfred Wellington Purdy was one of the most popular and important Canadian poets of the 20th century. Purdy's writing career spanned more than fifty years. His works include over thirty books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence. He has been called the nation's "unofficial poet laureate".

Born in Wooler, Ontario Purdy went to Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, and Trenton Collegiate Institute in Trenton, Ontario. He dropped out of school at 17 and rode the rails west to Vancouver. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Following the war, he worked in various jobs until the 1960s, when he was finally able to support himself as a writer, editor and poet.

Honours and awards Purdy received include the Order of Canada (O.C.) in 1982, the Order of Ontario in 1987, and the Governor General's Award, in 1965 for his collection The Cariboo Horses, and again in 1986 for The Collected Poems of Al Purdy. The League of Canadian Poets gave Purdy the Voice of the Land Award, a special award created by the League to honour his unique contribution to Canada.

Al Purdy died in North Saanich, B.C., on April 21, 2000. His final collection of poetry, Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, was released posthumously in the fall of 2000.

On May 20, 2008, a large bronze statue of Purdy was unveiled in Queen's Park in downtown Toronto.

Reviews

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listen, maybe I’m just not cultured enough to understand, but I can count on one hand the amount of poems in this book I actually enjoyed reading.

[Steve R · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems first published in 1962 and then reworked with deletions and additions for a new edition in 1968. The poems are very much of the 1950s and 1960s (he thankfully appends the year that each was written to the end of each poem). Also, very much a Canadian work, traveling as it does from British Columbia through Ontario and to Montreal.

The first half dozen or so poems are all on women: one who has been abandoned, one who has gone a long time without an orgasm, one picked up at a party who is too exotic and foreign for him; one who washes potatoes while her boss looks at her and a big-bottomed girl named Anna who left an impression of her buttocks in the snow.

He then becomes more of a traveler. He writes about Natives in B.C. and Negroes in Montreal. His 'verse' (it's really much closer to prose) is very light on any formal punctuation, minimal on use of capitals and only rarely paying any real heed to justification. The poems are marked by an extensive vocabulary (he uses the term 'muliebrity' and follows it with the parenthetical comment '(look it up)' - (it means womanhood or womanly qualities)), awareness of both classical lore and contemporary figures (Khruschev, JFK, Lumumba) and very little if any narrative development. Many poems end abruptedly.

The feeling I got was that Purdy was most often a bystander on his society's highway, idly noting down passing phenomena that caught his fancy. In one poem, he gives an entire line to the remark 'It's curious'. Later, he states 'Mine is the commonplace acceptance of good and evil ... the cynicism of the defeated majority'; with a lover, he finds 'our minds screaming in anger or laughter without meaning.' It is not a despairingly lack of engagement, but rather a wish to see the timeless essence of reality that, once realized, inevitably makes one's place in the universe an infinitesimally small one. The best poem to express this idea is 'Where the Moment Is'.

A poem on a visit to a cemetery includes the observation that 'human history is meaningless on this non-involved mountain in the admirable stillness called death.' Then, he figures he better get out of there before they lock the gates and the bars close. If you are ever going to read only one of Purdy's poems, make it 'At the Quinte Hotel', even though it is not characteristic of the majority of his other work - you won't forget it. And watch the 6 minute short film with Gord Downie playing the poet. Good stuff.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is more Freudian than anything I've ever read. And I don't buy Freudian psychology one whit. There's a reoccurring theme of competition with Purdy's son, and mention of Freudian incest. This is the white male in his purest form, and I have no sympathy. Don't like his treatment of women in these poems: object before human.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the Quinte Hotel


I am drinking
I am drinking yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
and I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man
so I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in one corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
while I watch with interest
a wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toliet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ass-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
“You shouldn’ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it”
So he says “Come on”
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him
(he is just a little guy)
and say reprovingly
“Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?”
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
“What kind of poems?”
“Flower poems”
“So tell us a poem”
I got off the little guy but reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for literature
and moved bt the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
“-the poem oughta be worth some beer”
It was a mistake in terminology
for silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not realy buy beer or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man

* * *

Detail


The ruined stone house
has an old apple tree
left there by the farmer
whatever else he took with him
It bears fruit every year
gone wild and wormy
with small bitter apples
nobody eats
even children know better
I passed that way on the road
to Trenton twice a month
all winter long
noticing how the apples clung
in spite of hurricane winds
sometimes with caps of snow
little golden bells
And perhaps none of the other
travellers looked that way
but I make no parable of them
they were there and that's all
For some reason I must remember
and think of the leafless tree
and its fermented fruit
one week in late January
when wind blew down the sun
and earth shook like a cold room
no one could live in
with zero weather
soundless golden bells
alone in the storm

[wil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ignited my uncaveated love for poetry again

[Hannah Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this after learning about it in charles bukowski's "the mathematics of the breath and the way" (stunning book, by the way). it was not my favorite, but it was definitely not my least favorite.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. Purdy's style does little for me--don't like his clunky, pieced-together images, or his faux "get a load'a me, bein' a poet, eh?" hoserism. But I like him even less when he's trying to be profound by being obscure. Then every once in a while he writes a poem I absolutely love, like "At the Quinte Hotel," so it's complicated.

[Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic.

[Darrell Reimer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A loving reissue of a seminal collection of poems. Steven Heighton's accompanying essay is also very fine.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took a few poems to find Al's voice. Then the poems flowed wonderfully. A great collection from a great Canadian poet.