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Linda Rogers: An Appreciation of Al Purdy
Al claims Eurithe lied about her age when they eloped in 1941. She says not, that she was legal-nearly seventeen, a mature girl from a big family. He likes to think of himself as a cradle robber; it goes with the rogue poet persona.
It is her pragmatic, no-nonsense, non-fiction approach that has kept the two of them on track for over fifty years. It is Eurithe who has balanced the books and steered through some pretty rough terrain, not excluding those irritating and time-consuming poetry wannabes who sometimes tie themselves to the fast track of the famous.
Her unusual name and unorthodox life are matched by a face in a million. Eurithe has the inscrutable beauty of a woman who has lived for a thousand years, most of them spent in the humid environment of talking men.
She is that interesting anomaly, the artist's wife, simultaneously muse and servant to the muse. Al would not be Al as we know him without her. She is the one who has taken the small earnings and made them into a comfortable life. She is the one at the centre of many great poems. If she is not the direct inspiration, then she is the listener, his best. When the "F"; word, fame, is spoken, she knows it is theirs, a mutual achievement. "We"; is the matrix in which language is transformed into beauty.
When asked what has kept them together for fifty-seven years, he is quick to exclaim "Love!"; while she looks somewhat skeptical.
While her husband wrote and sometimes held down a job, Eurithe steadily toiled as teacher and secretary. She took the grant and prize money and invested it in real estate.
As the second eldest in an Ontario family of eleven children, all of whom are hard workers and achievers, she has earned her comfort.
Eurithe makes a great pie and is still struggling to create the perfect loaf of bread. The first time I tried to show her, at Roblin Lake in the A-frame they built and where Al has written many beautiful poems, she put the rising bread into the oven in the plastic bowl I was using for mixing, while I was having my morning swim in the lake. The result was great sculpture but inedible. The second time, when I gave her a lesson with the poet Lorna Crozier, we left out the salt and the fat in deference to Eurithe's tired heart and the poet complained, excoriating me for undermining the bread for female territorial reasons!
Eurithe has either learned or knew intuitively that throwing her lot in with the great ego of a great voice was a lot like making bread. It has to do with hot air rising.
One baby in many, she made the decision many offspring from large families make and had only one herself. Eurithe says that most of her maternal energy has been consumed by the poet and the poetry she has fed in the literal and figurative sense. It is as if she has given herself to history.
There was a time when Eurithe wanted to be a doctor, but the life in poetry made no room for that.
When Eurithe abandons her silence, it is usually when her son is the issue or the rights of women, both subjects she takes very seriously.
I asked her once... if she found it paradoxical that she was so strong on the rights of women and so willing to lie down for poetry, leaving her own dreams in a drawer. She responded that she and Al are both devoted to the same god and her autonomy rests in that.
Eurithe is not a conventional woman of her age. She is a sexual being in her eighth decade. The sparks fly between them. You have the sense the irritable romance will proceed as long as both of them breathe.
At yard sales, he lurks rare books while she sniffs out china, especially her favourite with the green edge. Together they have shopped the global village, admiring its antiquities.
There is an awareness that, for Al and Eurithe, freedom is guarded contraband. Pulses are taken. Fat is cut. Poems run through the hourglass. They do not exchange presents on birthdays and at Christmas.
Death is respected as the moment the symbolic relationship that produces poetry will pass into history. Eurithe knows she is one of those rare women who have been immortalized.
She does not react when the poet announces to a crowded audience, there in part because every reading might be his last, that he and his bride no longer buy green bananas or play long-playing records. It is only theatre and she has had a lifetime of that. Theatre is fugitive. Poetry is forever.
[Linda Rogers / BCBW 1999]
It is her pragmatic, no-nonsense, non-fiction approach that has kept the two of them on track for over fifty years. It is Eurithe who has balanced the books and steered through some pretty rough terrain, not excluding those irritating and time-consuming poetry wannabes who sometimes tie themselves to the fast track of the famous.
Her unusual name and unorthodox life are matched by a face in a million. Eurithe has the inscrutable beauty of a woman who has lived for a thousand years, most of them spent in the humid environment of talking men.
She is that interesting anomaly, the artist's wife, simultaneously muse and servant to the muse. Al would not be Al as we know him without her. She is the one who has taken the small earnings and made them into a comfortable life. She is the one at the centre of many great poems. If she is not the direct inspiration, then she is the listener, his best. When the "F"; word, fame, is spoken, she knows it is theirs, a mutual achievement. "We"; is the matrix in which language is transformed into beauty.
When asked what has kept them together for fifty-seven years, he is quick to exclaim "Love!"; while she looks somewhat skeptical.
While her husband wrote and sometimes held down a job, Eurithe steadily toiled as teacher and secretary. She took the grant and prize money and invested it in real estate.
As the second eldest in an Ontario family of eleven children, all of whom are hard workers and achievers, she has earned her comfort.
Eurithe makes a great pie and is still struggling to create the perfect loaf of bread. The first time I tried to show her, at Roblin Lake in the A-frame they built and where Al has written many beautiful poems, she put the rising bread into the oven in the plastic bowl I was using for mixing, while I was having my morning swim in the lake. The result was great sculpture but inedible. The second time, when I gave her a lesson with the poet Lorna Crozier, we left out the salt and the fat in deference to Eurithe's tired heart and the poet complained, excoriating me for undermining the bread for female territorial reasons!
Eurithe has either learned or knew intuitively that throwing her lot in with the great ego of a great voice was a lot like making bread. It has to do with hot air rising.
One baby in many, she made the decision many offspring from large families make and had only one herself. Eurithe says that most of her maternal energy has been consumed by the poet and the poetry she has fed in the literal and figurative sense. It is as if she has given herself to history.
There was a time when Eurithe wanted to be a doctor, but the life in poetry made no room for that.
When Eurithe abandons her silence, it is usually when her son is the issue or the rights of women, both subjects she takes very seriously.
I asked her once... if she found it paradoxical that she was so strong on the rights of women and so willing to lie down for poetry, leaving her own dreams in a drawer. She responded that she and Al are both devoted to the same god and her autonomy rests in that.
Eurithe is not a conventional woman of her age. She is a sexual being in her eighth decade. The sparks fly between them. You have the sense the irritable romance will proceed as long as both of them breathe.
At yard sales, he lurks rare books while she sniffs out china, especially her favourite with the green edge. Together they have shopped the global village, admiring its antiquities.
There is an awareness that, for Al and Eurithe, freedom is guarded contraband. Pulses are taken. Fat is cut. Poems run through the hourglass. They do not exchange presents on birthdays and at Christmas.
Death is respected as the moment the symbolic relationship that produces poetry will pass into history. Eurithe knows she is one of those rare women who have been immortalized.
She does not react when the poet announces to a crowded audience, there in part because every reading might be his last, that he and his bride no longer buy green bananas or play long-playing records. It is only theatre and she has had a lifetime of that. Theatre is fugitive. Poetry is forever.
[Linda Rogers / BCBW 1999]
Submitted on July 22, 2003 in By David.
