The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al PurdyGerald Lynch, Shoshannah Ganz, Josephene Kealey University of Ottawa Press, 2008 M02 28 - 282 pages If one poet can be said to be the Canadian poet, that poet is Al Purdy (1918–2000). Numerous eminent scholars and writers have attested to this pre-eminent status. George Bowering described him as “the world’s most Canadian poet” (1970), while Sam Solecki titled his book-length study of Purdy The Last Canadian Poet (1999). In The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy, a group of seventeen scholars, critics, writers, and educators appraise and reappraise Purdy’s contribution to English literature. They explore Purdy’s continuing significance to contemporary writers; the life he dedicated to literature and the persona he crafted; the influences acting on his development as a poet; the ongoing scholarly projects of editing and publishing his writing; particular poems and individual books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; and the larger themes in his work, such as the Canadian North and the predominant importance of place. In addition, two contemporary poets pay tribute with original poems. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
| 13 | |
LAC Alfred W Purdy | 31 |
Ivory Thots and the Last Romantic | 51 |
Purdy among the Tombs | 63 |
Editing Purdy Purdy Editing | 71 |
Al Purdys Hiroshima Poems | 91 |
Al Purdys Rhetoric of Failure | 159 |
Song and Silence in Al Purdys Family Elegies | 173 |
Purdys Reliquary Poetics | 191 |
On Trying to Wear Als Shirts | 213 |
Reflections on a Dynamic Collaboration | 221 |
Al Purdy Sam Solecki and Canadian Tradition | 227 |
Conclusion Retrospective and Prospective | 239 |
Select Bibliography of Secondary Materials | 247 |
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Common terms and phrases
Al Purdy Ameliasburgh Annettes archives Arctic Beaufort Sea Bentley biography Bliss Carman Bowering Buckley Canada Canadian Literature Canadian Poetry Canadian Writing Collected Poems critics D. H. Lawrence Dead Poet death describes Djwa Dorsets Doug Beardsley Dragland E.J. Pratt Earle Birney early earth edition editor Enchanted Echo Essays on Canadian family elegies feeling grandfather Harbour Publishing human imagination Irving Layton Ivory Thought Lament Last Canadian Poet later Lawrence letter lines living lyric Madeira Park McClelland and Stewart memoir North of Belleville North of Summer notes Olson Ottawa Owen Roblin perhaps picturesque poem's poet's Pratt Purdy Purdy's poems Purdy's poetry reader reliquary reliquary poetics Remembering revised Robert ruin Sandra Djwa Search of Owen Selected Poems sense Solecki Song sound speaker stanza Stone Bird suggest symposium textual things tion Toronto tradition uncanny University University of Saskatchewan voice volume words wrote