— Freeing Al Purdy —

From Nationalist Cell to Postmodern Haven

By Patrick McEvoy-Halston
August 2003

Mark Silverberg, in “The Can(adi)onization of Al Purdy,” argues that

Purdy was used by a “literary-cultural industry” (227) to help establish both a
Canadian canon and a quintessential Canadian identity. According to
Silverberg, in their quest to create a particular Purdy personae—that being, a
backwoods, “native” (228), un-American, working-class man—critics and
anthologists in the 1960s and 70s (and beyond) provided a very limited sense of
the man to the reading public. He thinks Purdy is actually far more
“paradoxical,” problematical, and “sophisticated” (231) than we have been lead
to expect. Purdy, apparently, was not only more interesting but more
postmodern than we have been lead to expect, as well, and Silverberg offers us
textual analyses of select poems, in part, to suggest just how aware Purdy was of
the socially constructed nature of gender and of the instability of language. He
therefore attempts not only to recover qualities “at the heart of Purdy’s work”
(245), but to establish Purdy as someone worthy of sophisticated postmodern
attentions.
Silverberg agrees with Robert Lecker in thinking that during “the decade
from 1965 to 1975” (226), “the national preoccupation with defining a Canadian
identity translated into a [. . .] literary-critical industry whose purpose was to
find or create images of that identity” (227). Purdy, because of his “rural,
historically minded, documentary-like verse [. . .] [,] was deemed the perfect
candidate for canonicity” (232). His work was therefore widely critiqued and
anthologized, but selectively so: since anthologists/critics wanted him to be
understood as primarily interested in crafting “sketches” of “suitably native
landscape[s] in “garrison/survival” narratives, and in maintaining the
“continuity of the present and the past” (230), only poems which best developed
these subjects and themes were widely circulated and commented upon.
Silverberg believes that the anthologists’/critics’ desire to “pigeon-hole”
Purdy as an “authentic [. . .] Canadian” (230) has meant we have been offered a
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very skewed and limited sense of the poet. Because the “anthologized poems are
invariably documentary and mimetic,” Silverberg argues that we rarely
encounter Purdy’s “fine experimental and more technically self-conscious
poems” (230). Because anthologists/critics did not want to complicate his
status as a rural Canadian primarily involved with, and interested in, his native
habitat, we rarely encounter his poems about “Cuba and Greece” (241), or hear
about his travels abroad. Because anthologists/critics wanted to link him to his
Canadian poetic predecessors, his poems dedicated “to D.H. Lawrence, Dylan
Thomas, Ezra Pound, [. . .] [etc.,] have consistently been passed over in favour
of more parochial subjects” (231). In short, Silverberg believes readers have
been left largely unaware of the full extent of Purdy’s sophistication, and that he
did have some cosmopolitan aspects.
Silverberg’s interest in the effects of nationalist ideology on the
circulation of Purdy’s poetry, suggests the influence of New Historicist analysis
on his thought. The influence of other critical approaches upon his criticism is
apparent in his “recovery” of the complex nature of a commonly anthologized
poem, “Song of the Impermanent,” and in his analysis of a largely
unanthologized poem, “On Realizing He Has Written Some Bad Poems.” The
“Song of the Impermanent,” according to Silverberg, is often badly misread by
critics eager to shape Purdy into a “rugged, masculine, working-class Canadian”
(233). Silverberg does a feminist analysis of the poem; explores the “speaker’s
blatant misogyny” (236); and decides that the poem is best understood as a
sophisticated “satire” which “enacts certain social constructions of masculinity”
(237). He also does an analysis of “On Realizing” in which he likens Purdy to
the still fashionable critic, Fredric Jameson. Silverberg concludes his analysis of
this poem by asserting that Purdy, like an alert student of deconstruction, was
well aware of how “language will always have its way over us” (246).
Anyone hoping Purdy’s poetry will find a larger audience amongst
academics would likely be pleased with Silverberg’s efforts. Purdy, formerly the
“self-made, backwoods poet” (233)—an entirely disrespectable sort in these
days of the hegemonic supremacy, not of nationalist literary critics, but of
specialized literary schools—is made to seem as if he shares the concerns and
perspectives of contemporary academia. Silverberg believes he realizes a more
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“accurate” (239) portrayal of Purdy in his essay, but since this effort so cleanly,
so suspiciously, establishes Purdy’s modishness, we leave his essay reminded
that our own reading of Purdy’s poetry should predominately inform our critical
assessment of the man and his work.
Silverberg also leaves us uncertain as to how well he helps us move
beyond “the search for a singular Canadian identity” (247), for to some extent
his analysis of Purdy’s poetry serves to update rather than loosen the conception
of Purdy as a writer of “quintessential Canadian poet[ry]” (243). Silverberg
repeatedly castigates critics (such as Dennis Lee) who insist on characterizing
Purdy as a writer of “survival” (247) poetry, yet his own characterization of
Purdy’s encounter with language amounts to a story of Purdy’s persistence and
hardiness in the face of obstacles. Silverberg tells us that Purdy was aware of
how “our small intentions will be subsumed in [language’s] [. . .] broader
outlines” (246), but insists that instead of being broken by the “‘prison-house of
language’ [. . .] [,] [Purdy] realize[d] [. . .] that language’s triumph [was] [. . .]
also his own” (246). Furthermore, while Silverberg believes we should
“recognize the extreme mutability and flexibility of identity” (246), and while he
does draw attention to Denis Lee’s study of Purdy’s “polyphony” (247), he still
ends his essay characterizing (and seemingly summarizing) Purdy as a man
aware of his own “bumbling [. . .] failures and treacheries” (247). This
assessment of Purdy closely echoes that of other critics such as Rosemary
Sullivan (who believes that Purdy’s “quintessential gaze” was of “ironic-
deflation” [143]), and anthologists such as Gary Geddes (who believes that
Purdy’s “self-mockery” [66] elevates his best work). Silverberg, then, might
make Purdy seem more modish than modern, but he maintains Purdy’s
personae as the self-effacing survivor—that is, as the quintessential Canadian.

Works Cited
Geddes, Gary ed. 15 Canadian Poets × 3. Toronto: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.
Silverberg, Mark. “The Can(adi)onization of Al Purdy.” Essays on Canadian
Writing 70 (2000): 226-51. Print.
Sullivan, Rosemary. “Purdy’s Dark Cowboy.” Essays on Canadian Writing 49
(1993): 142-46. Print.
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