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

literary house #2

without actually meaning to, i’ve managed to visit most of Ernest Hemingway’s houses…i’ve walked past his first address in Toronto and i’ve led literary walking tours around his various addresses in Paris, so when i was in Key West recently, staying around the corner from his fabulous former house, i really had to visit. it’s a gorgeous house…this illustration gives you an idea of the amazing garden, the wide verandas surrounding the house on both floors, and at the back you can see the curved roof of the guest house – which is where Hem kept his study.

the house today is overrun with cats & tour guides (the cats are healthy; the tour guides might want to join AA en masse) but even in its current museum state, with little original furniture, the house still manages to give hints of what kind of home it might have been during Hemingway’s years here.

he wrote some of his best fiction, including as A Farewell to Arms, in this house, along with some less interesting nonfiction. it’s here that Hem started getting increasingly worried about his macho public persona, when in reality, the more fragile male characters in his fiction were probably more like the writer than he ever would have admitted.

this is his writing study – located in the upstairs portion of the guest house, which Hem connected to his bedroom by a rope bridge. i like this detail: the writer at play, going to work. the bridge also meant he didn’t have to go downstairs & interact with anyone before hitting the typewriter…now that’s a home detail that a writer can appreciate!

i hope Papa’s ghost isn’t here though – not only are the tour guides creepy, the bookshop is tucked out of the way on the far side of the swimming pool, and it sells a lot more postcards than books.

the house was the message

“…a medium is not something neutral – it does something to people…It takes hold of them. It massages them, it bumps them around.” – Marshall McLuhan

i would argue that the same can be said of a house…

Canada’s own media guru Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980) lived last part of his life in Toronto’s gorgeous Wychwood Park, in a house was built by Eden Smith & Sons. Eden Smith was known for his commitment to the Arts & Crafts style, and the McLuhan house still has most of its original details.

McLuhan called the house “Walden II” according to his daughter, Elizabeth, and he insisted that guests walk through the surrounding park with him. He spent long evenings talking with friends over dinners (and his guest list included primer minister PET & others, so some of those nights must have seen some pretty darn interesting conversations). McLuhan liked to work in various rooms of the house, often lounging on the sofa in the wood-panelled living room, surrounded by books & papers (which apparently drove his wife Corinne to distraction, because of the mess).

Buildings from Eden Smith are always interesting, as Smith was committed to testing open plans, niches, and irregular entrance halls that were designed to take full advantage of the building’s location. And if you don’t simply want to take my word for it, and you’re feeling flush, you can get out there & buy McLuhan’s former house; his widow, Corinne, passed away this spring and 3 Wychwood Park is currently on the market. I really hope that whoever buys & lives in the house takes the time to consider McLuhan’s legacy…and hey, couldn’t the house get a plaque, too?

(a bit more about the park here)

(and for a wonderful post on McLuhan’s ongoing relevance re. the net, check here)

literary house #1

Poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is one of the many writers who were drawn to Florida during the 20th century and i couldn’t resist looking up her house. A nomad all her life, Bishop arrived in Key West during the 1930s; in 1938, she & her then-lover, Louise Crane, bought a traditional “eyebrow” house at 624 White Street. Bishop held onto the house for nearly a decade, despite the collapse of her relationship with Crane. Her first book of poems was published while she lived here, but while Bishop was clearly smitten with the climate & lifestyle of the Keys, her battles with alcoholism and depression eventually led to her to sell the house and later to her leaving Florida.

Bishop wrote of the house: “It is very well made, with slightly arched beams so that it looks either like a ship’s cabin or a freight car.” I think I’ve read other writers who have compared their homes to trains or ship cabins – maybe the sensation of travel & isolation helps them to focus. Certainly these are themes highly relevant to Bishop’s work, and I’m always looking for ways that homes reflect the people living within them!

Today, the house is still lovely (though it sports a loud orange sign warning Bishop fans to stay out…so i did). I find it fascinating that she lived in one of these “eyebrow” houses so peculiar to Key West – where the second story is essentially hidden by the eyebrow of the roof, which comes low over a two-storey veranda. You can see the odd effect in this photo. This hidden aspect of the house, coupled with its overgrown garden & well-worn shutters, seem a perfect reflection of Bishop’s often lonely poetic practice.

Though many people know her poem “One Art”, i prefer the evocative “Florida”, which begins:

The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters,
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons,
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass.
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every time in a tantrum...

(read the rest of the poem)