>X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
>Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 21:27:34
>To: [log in to unmask]
>From: Jamie Reid <[log in to unmask]>
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>
>Al Purdy died in Victoria yesterday. This is the first thing I saw when I
>opened "Piling Blood":
>
>
>ARCHILOCHOS
>
>
>Archilochos the soldier,
>defeated in battle and running away,
>had to leave his shield behind
>on the battlefield:
>
>"Well, what if some savage Thracian
>finds the shield I had to abandon?
>That's too bad. But it saved my skin,
>I'm alive. And hell, I'll buy a better one."
>
>While Bakchylides, Simonides and Pindar
>wined and dined in rich men's houses,
>Archilochos, with sword and shield, a soldier
>on the field of battle, courted the Muses.
>
>He died nearly three thousand years ago,
>in the sea-dancing Ionian islands
>- he wrote all his life: how to bear a blow,
>to love life and even live with dying -
>
>When he was promised Lykambes' daughter
>by her father, and then refused her,
>Paros Island rang with his fury -
>And Lykambes? Cursed by all the gods.
>
>He wasn't Homer, he wasn't anybody famous;
>He sang of the people next door;
>his language was their language; he died in battle
>(with a brand new shield). Living was honour
>enough for him, with death on every hand.
>Archilochos the soldier, he was us.
>
>Three thousand years? I can still hear
>that commonsense song of the shield:
>a loser who managed to be victorious,
>his name is a champagne cry in my blood.
>
>
>I know there are many other poets of my own generation and later
>generations who will remember with great fondness Al Purdy's generous and
>democratic attitude. A big and commanding presence, his great bellow when
>speaking or reading was like the voices of the trade-union organizers of
>the post World War II period: it went right to the back of the hall, and
>needed no microphone or amplifier.
>
>A man of big appetites, capacities, generosities and deep sensitivities, he
>represents both in his work and his life, a style of North American
>malehood which no longer exists, and which hardly existed even then. In his
>faults and his virtues both as a man and a poet, his consciousness was
>formed by the experience of the Great Depression and the global war which
>followed it, times which required tough and determined human beings, and he
>was certainly one of them.
>
>The fact that he is one of the only poets in Canada EVER to make his living
>mainly from poetry is a measure of the quality and appeal of his poetry as
>well as a measure of Purdy's own lifetime determination.
>
>Here are some notes from the book I am still compiling about Vancouver
>poets (Purdy is a Vancouver poet by virtue of having lived here in the 60s,
>and for other reasons, too.)
>
>
>Made me understand that poets
>drink beer and anything else
>they can get their hands on.  Thought at the time
>that this was real knowledge, and still remain
>more than half-convinced that alcohol and poetry
>are coextensive: no poetry
>without some alcohol, no alcohol
>without some poetry.
>
>His convincing plain man presence:
>The kind of man you had to be
>to get through the depression and the war in Canada
>and still remain a poet.
>
>I wanted to write a poem about the birth of language,
>but then Al Purdy read the very poem I was trying to write,
>better than I could ever do it.
>
>
>A mildly humourous footnote with a peculiar synchronous resonance:
>
>Fred Douglas, a friend of mine also known to Purdy, is a short curly-headed
>Celtic Scot who looks enough like me that he could be mistaken for my
>brother. As I was writing the first version of this e-mail, Fred called me
>on the telephone. I remembered that the copy of "Piling Blood" from which I
>quoted above was bought at a reading Al gave at the University of Victoria
>in 1987 or l988. Purdy signed the book for me:
>
> "For Freddy Douglas, with longtime (two words here are illegibly scrawled
>(probably they read "best wishes"))! Al Purdy."
>
>Only for a second did I consider going back to ask Al to change the
>inscription, then I just kept on walking, and told him about it later.
>Later that same evening, to a mildly obnoxious celebrity hound, Purdy
>introduced himself as Leonard Cohen, and me as Fred Douglas.
>




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