Introduction:
It can be observed that there is a new style of romance in Al Purdy’s poetry. Al Purdy’s poetry marks a significant departure from conventional romantic traditions by reshaping romance through realism, memory, and personal experience. Rather than indulging in idealized love or sentimental imagination, Purdy presents a grounded and mature form of romance that emerges from ordinary life, historical awareness, and emotional honesty. His poetic voice blends the physical landscape with inner reflection, creating a distinctive style where affection, longing, and human connection are expressed in a restrained yet deeply moving manner. This “new style of romance” is not escapist but rooted in reality, transforming everyday experiences into moments of quiet intensity and poetic insight.
Comparison of Early and Revised “Elegy for a Grandfather”:
The evolution of romantic expression in Purdy’s poetry can be suitably traced through a comparison of parallel passages from the 1956 original version of ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’ and the 1986 revision included under New Poems in The Collected Poems of Al Purdy. The third stanzas of the two versions, published thirty years apart, exhibit significant differences, though, perhaps more surprisingly, many similarities are representative of Purdy’s poetic evolution. The third stanza of Purdy’s 1956 ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’ reads:
“No doubt at all that he’s dead: a sadly virtuous voice
Folded tragedy sideways and glossed his glittering sins.
Old in his ancient barrow and no-one could ever guess
If the shy fox people play with his gnarled grey bones.
Or a green Glengarry river sluices his grave and sighs.
And earth has another tenant involved in her muttering plans.
With a deck of cards in his pocket and Presbyterian grin.”
Romantic Language and Formal Structure in the Original Version:
In this original version, the line, “a green Glengarry river sluices his grave and sighs” and “earth has another tenant involved in her muttering plans”, exemplify the overtly romantic phrasing and diction of Purdy’s early poems. The phrase “shy fox people”, seems to be a deliberately sensitive and enigmatic attempt to add a mythic or legendary quality to the grandfather’s death. The stanza form and grammar are rigid; the more cultivated poet would never observe the correct grammar of “No doubt at all that he’s dead.” His phrasing would be— and is in the revision— more off-hand and colloquial. This formality of structure and grammar characterizes many early Purdy poems, such as ‘Chiaroscuro’, in which he stiffly writes:
“Escape is possible then, but nearly
Always the roads close in behind,
And words are trapped like odd, dead animals,
where dusty villages stand.”
Rigidity Despite Reduced Romantic Pretension:
Though the diction here is virtually unaffected by romantic pretension, the expression remains rigid and awkward due to Purdy’s adherence to formal grammar. In ‘Chiaroscuro’ and the original version of ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’, the observed formal conventions allow for little of the casual, direct, and even absurd expression which characterises later Purdy poems such as ‘Love at Roblin Lake’, in which he enthusiastically declares:
“My ambition as I remember and
I always remember was always
to make love vulgarly and immensely
as the vulgar elephant doth
and immense reptiles did
in the open air openly
sweating and grunting together
and going.”
Shift to Informality in Later Poetry:
Purdy’s ‘Love at Roblin Lake’ is at the opposite extreme in terms of form from his earlier rigidity structured poems. In counterpoint to the original version of ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’, Purdy’s 1986 revision avoids affected, pretentious language, formal grammar and lining, as well as manufactured romantic allusions. The mature poet writes:
“Just the same he’s dead. A sticky religious voice.
folded his century sideways to get it out of sight,
and lowered him into the ground like someone still alive
who had to be handled very carefully,
even after death he made people nervous;
and earth takes him as it takes more beautiful things:
populations of whole countries,
museums and works of art,
and women with such glow
it makes their background vanish
they vanish too,
and Lesbos’ singer in her sunny islands
stopped when the sun went down……”
Elastic Line Structure and Spontaneity:
The elastic lining of the revised “Elegy” suggests the structurally informal character of later Purdy poems, as well as their illusion of spontaneity, the lining having been deliberately crafted to convey an impression of immediacy and reflex. This expansive line becomes highly manifest in Poems for All the Annettes onwards, and as George Woodcock observes, in ‘On the Poetry of Al Purdy’:
“It is in the way he can manipulate the long line to create a variety of moods that Purdy has shown his growing power to fit the form exactly to the thought and thing, which is the sign of ultimate poetic craftsmanship. This is not to say that his poems are entirely linear in their overall structure, for often the juxtaposition of jarring or contrasting elements is an essential part of the effect he is seeking, and there are times when he uses the moderately short line very effectively to achieve a cumulative emotive effect.”
Cumulative Emotive Effect and Voice Modulation:
This “cumulative emotive effect” is apparent in the conclusion to the third stanza of the revised ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’, in which the short line signifies the transition from realistic commentary to romantic reflex. Purdy likewise manipulates his voice through the juxtaposition of the long and short line: the structural change at the conclusion to this stanza parallels the change in voice from the common man to sensitive, romantic poet. The evolving devaluation of Purdy’s poetic perspective is likewise elucidated through the slight modifications of the revised ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’; for instance, the “sadly virtuous voice” of the minister is deflated to a “sticky religious voice”. Although the hypocrisy of the minister is suggested in the original version, it is brought more to the fore in the revision through direct, unambiguous diction. Much of the meaning of the original poem is confused, seemingly eclipsed by Purdy’s concern with sounding poetic. After all, that does “folded tragedy sideways” really mean? What is its purpose other than to sound poetic? By contrast, the revised depiction of the minister folding the grandfather’s “century sideways to get it out of sight” conveys the animosity between modern, religious pretensions and natural, historical dignity. The mature Purdy has developed an intense, persistent interest in the relationship between the present and past, while the younger poet can only touch upon such considerations with his tight, glib description of his grandfather’s “bad century”.
Romantic Redemption in the Revised Version:
The romance of the revised ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’ is strategically placed to transform the cynical realism of the initial section of the poem, seemingly signifying that even the mature poet deems it necessary to redeem dismal reality through the redemption offered by romance. In the revision, the grandfather is redeemed through the continuity of time and his spiritual relationship with his grandson, the poet himself. Such romantic redemption of the grandfather is more transcendent and profound than that offered in the original version of the poem. In the 1956 ‘Elegy for a Grandfather’, Purdy’s primary means of redeeming his grandfather from transience is through his own romanticised childhood vision of the man whom he later, it seems, discovers to be less deserving of such hero worship:
“The man knows and the whimsical tale is told
Of a lying lumberjack with a fist like a piece of suet
A temper like toppling timber and splintering words to scaid
The holy ears of an angel—and a beautiful man in a riot:
But a bright, bragging boy’s hero with a pocket full of gold.
Like a neolith swear word from the opposite end of time.”
Conflicted Perspective in Early Reflection:
In this early reflection on his relationship with his grandfather, the poetic perspective seems to be slightly confused; Purdy both venerates and deflates his own romantic account of the man. He seems uncertain whether such a rough and vulgar character is worthy of such romantic treatment and homage. The ideals of the mature Purdy are, however, more certain; he is a champion of such scandals and sins as those in his grandfather’s past. It is a type of anti-romanticism that is manifest in this revision and in Purdy’s mature poetry. The grandfather becomes the, hero of the mature poet because, paradoxically, he defies modern social ideals, graces, and even society itself:
“No, my grandfather was decidedly unbeautiful
two sixty pounds of scarred slag,
barnraiser and backwoods farmer:
become an old man in a one-room apartment
over a drygoods store,
become anonymous as a dead animal
whose chemicals cannot be reconstituted.”
Anti-Romanticism As a New Romantic Ideal
Ironically, such an anti-romantic character becomes the prototypical romantic hero in Purdy’s developed perspective and ideology; he is worthy of homage because of his unconventional power and vigour. It is the grandfather’s rough, unpretentious dignity, his irreverence, and intensity which become the romantic ideals of the mature Purdy. Therefore, romantic idealism is indeed manifest in the revision of Elegy for a Grandfather”, “though, due to conventionally romantic diction, its presence is more blatantly displayed in the original version.
Continuity of Romantic Impulse in Purdy’s Poetry:
Though the conventions of traditional romanticism, evidenced in early Purdy poems, are abandoned as he develops his own mature voice and style, the romantic impulse and the redemption of bleak reality through romanticism remains a governing force throughout his corpus of poetry. The revisions of ‘Postscript’, preserved in The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, further demonstrate that Purdy’s romantic impulse is sustained throughout his development form imitative romantic to reporter of direct experience, though its initially formal expression is changed. The conventional trappings of romanticism disappear during the three revisions of ‘Postscript’, yet the intense romantic impulse itself is sustained, if not indeed developed. During revision, the structural rigidity of original version is dispelled, as is the pretentious language and overtly fanciful of the expression. The last stanza of the original ‘Postscript’ with its allusiveness and affected diction is virtually obliterated in the later versions of the poem:
“But she is nothing imagined; the green shimmer
Of mind-evergreens, the liquid insomnia
Of pre-natal memories in day-sky,
Being perishable and flesh; but in her was clamour.
Of voices, the structure of music, the diamond flaw
Of regret that intricate irreplaceable things must die.”