literary house #3: Al Purdy

Al Purdy (1918-2000) is remembered as one of Canada’s great 20^th century poets. this is the CBC website’s quote from their documentary about him:

During the first forty-odd years of his life, Al Purdy wrote a lot of bad poetry. Where others would have quit, Purdy persevered until he found his own distinctive voice. And what he said startled people. His unconventional works poeticized barroom brawls, hockey players and homemade beer.

but the quote doesn’t mention one of the things that makes him particularly Canadian, in my eyes: Purdy lived in what amounts to a cabin in the woods, that he built himself, which means a great deal of the poetry which eventually won him the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, & the Governor General’s Award was written in a rough & ready A-frame near Kingston, Ontario.  it’s this home on Roblin Lake that interests me.

it’s not necessarily the kind of architectural masterpiece people usually get sentimental about, but it certainly suited Al Purdy. and now it’s in the news because his 84-year-old widow, Eurithe, is putting the A-frame on the market. despite her great fondness for the place, she expects a buyer may well tear the place down and build something more, well, substantial.

what makes a place perfect for a certain individual? whatever television decorating shows claim, a creatively-inspiring home doesn’t have to win any Martha Stewart awards. as the small A-frame proves, it only has to suit the people living there. so the question seems to be: is it a tragedy to tear down a home where great poems were written? i’m not sure.

for any Canadian literature mavens out there, Eurithe Purdy looked into having the cottage preserved as a writers’ residence, but couldn’t find any takers (the Writer’s Trust has just taken over Pierre Berton’s childhood home & has its hands full). so it’s possible that Purdy’s old writing shack, his typewriter, and the exact view from his window will soon disappear.

but i think it’s possible that Purdy’s home, now that he’s gone, is no longer all that important. his spirit may linger there, maybe sweeping leaves up on the roof (see the Globe & Mail’s recent article for more about this) but really, the home will stay relevant as long as the poems that Purdy was inspired to write here continue to be read and appreciated.

so instead of buying his cottage, i reread some of his poems & found this, about the house in question; i particularly like the lines about what the house dreams about. the guest is believed to be Milton Acorn, a fellow-poet who helped Purdy & his wife build the house.

House Guest

For two months we quarrelled over socialism …. poetry …. how to boil water
doing the dishes …. carpentry …. Russian steel production figures and whether
you could believe them and whether Toronto Leafs would take it all
that year and maybe hockey was rather like a good jazz combo
never knowing what came next
Listening
how the new house built with salvaged old lumber
bent a little in the wind and dreamt of the trees it came from
the time it was traveling thru
and the world of snow moving all night in its blowing sleep
while we discussed ultimate responsibility for a pile of dirty dishes
Jews in the Negev …. the Bible as mythic literature …. Peking Man
and in early morning looking outside to see the pink shapes of wind
printed on snow and a red sun tumbling upward almost touching the house
and fretwork tracks of rabbits outside where the window light had lain
last night an audience
watching in wonderment the odd human argument
that uses words instead of teeth
and got bored and went away

Of course there was wild grape wine and a stove full of Douglas fir
(railway salvage) and lake ice cracking its knuckles
in hard Ontario weather
and working with saw and hammer at the house
all winter afternoon
disagreeing about how to pound nails
arguing vehemently over how to make good coffee
Marcus Aurelius …. Spartacus …. Plato and François Villon
And it used to frustrate him terribly
that even when I was wrong he couldn’t prove it
and when I agreed with him he was always suspicious
and thought he must be wrong because I said he was right
Every night the house shook from his snoring
a great motor driving us on into daylight
and the vibration was terrible
Every morning I’d get up and say “Look at the nails-
you snored them out half an inch in the night-”
He’d believe me at first and look and get mad and glare
and stare angrily out the window while I watched
10 minutes of irritation
drain from his eyes onto fields and farms and miles and miles of snow
We quarreled over how dour I was in early morning
and how cheerful he was for counterpoint
and I argued that a million years of evolution
from snarling apeman have to be traversed before noon
and the desirability of murder in a case like his
and whether the Etruscans were really Semites
the Celtic invasion of Britain …. European languages …. Roman law
we argued about white being white (prove it dammit) …. & cockroaches
bedbugs in Montreal …. separatism …. Nietzsche …. Iroquois horsebreakers on the prairie
death of the individual and the ultimate destiny of man
and one night we quarreled over how to cook eggs
In the morning driving to town we hardly spoke
and water poured downhill outside all day for it was spring
when we were gone with frogs mentioning lyrically
Russian steel production figures on Roblin Lake
which were almost nil
I left him hitch hiking on #2 Highway to Montreal
and I guess I was wrong about those eggs

– Al Purdy

veranda livin’

veranda…verandah…porch…front stoop: no matter what you want to call it, the veranda is a public face on a house. must be the weather that’s making me notice them this week—verandas, by definition, have a roof against the rain.

I like walking past verandas in action—people sitting & watching the world go by, catching up with neighbours, spying on passers-by. on Palmerston, there are people sitting on their front stoop, waving to people they know, fidgeting with their laptops, talking loudly on their cellphones (probably complaining about new text charges), keeping an eye on their kids, playing with their dogs, fighting with their new giant recycling bins, going through their mail, and having friends over for a drink…

it’s all so much more public & sociable than the back deck, whether it’s the serious high-end High South veranda of Savannah Georgia or the generally more casual Palmerston veranda, like this one just up the street.

Miami’s Habitat for Humanity has simple but fabulous verandas on their public housing designs. and I wish there were a way to incorporate the concept into condo buildings & apartment towers. kind of the way some Art Deco Miami hotel/apartments have a veranda where you can eat breakfast or read the papers, and actually talk to our neighbours instead of staring straight ahead in the elevator as we come up from the garage.

seems like our condo balconies are more like pods, a module take on the backyard deck—here I am in my own private universe & I cannot see you.

verandas don’t stand for that kind of nonsense. they say “we’re all in this together.”

a friend is moving to Toronto this month & she’s asked people to make tiles to put around her front door, to bring blessings to her veranda—copying the Portuguese neighbours’ shrines & religious tiles. she’s not exactly a Virgin Mary type, so I’m looking forward to dropping by & hanging out on the veranda…