![Geological Survey of Canada Geological Survey of Canada](/web/20061103055314im_/http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/esst_images/gsc_e.jpeg) Natural Resources Canada > Earth Sciences Sector > Geological Survey of Canada > Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology
Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology The slight painful shudder of life
In an assessment of our national verse that is not entirely
whimsical, Margaret Atwood has written,
"Like the poetry of Al Purdy, which in some many ways
epitomizes it, Canadian poetry has been very fond of digging things
up."
More than any other contemporary Canadian poet, Al Purdy (1918-2000)
was able to meld time together with narrative and a strong sense of place.
Eschewing the academic penchant for separating life's chronology into
isolated segments of history, pre-history and geologic time, Purdy saw
these as stages grading together in a seamless continuum. In "Lament
for the Dorsets", he ponders the extinction of an Inuit group a mere
600 years ago. For all we know about these people, they might as well have
been creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago -- archeology
transforming into paleontology ....
how could we imagine them in the past
squatting among the moving glaciers
six hundred years ago
with glowing lamps?
As remote or nearly
as the trilobites and swamps
when coal became
or the last great reptile hissed
at a mammal the size of a mouse
that squeaked and fled
In a critical literary analysis of Al Purdy and his poetry, Louis
Mackendrick of the University of Windsor notes, "[His] comprehensive
focus on time, evolution, pre-history, and the here-and-now were to become
the hallmarks of his best poetic achievement". In "A walk on
Wellington Street" Purdy commingles episodes from history and
paleontology on a stroll along Ottawa's cardinal street. He sees Sir
John A. stumbling against a curb and breaking the mickey in his hip
pocket. Peering into the slabs of mottled Tyndall stone facing the
government buildings, Purdy conjures up a marvellous imagery of fossils in
rock -- "the slight painful shudder of life ... thru this clogged and
retarded stone". Near the Peace Tower, he pauses to
stare morosely at the sandstone shapes
where fossil worms coffined inside the stone
float in hundred million year sleep
out dying the living people here
in stone hammocks that never arrive.
Like the migrating dinosaurs that appear in many of his poems, Purdy
returned (not in spirit, but corporally) again and again to the shores of
the Bearpaw Sea -- the seaway that bisected the continent from the Arctic
Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico in the Late Cretaceous. In "Lost in the
Badlands", Purdy observes the mass extinction that brought an end to
the dinosaurs dominance,
..... next morning
The Great Dying began
until nothing of any size remained
but some scampering rodents
a few half-assed mammals
still trying to say something
back there at the end of the Cretaceous.
Further reading:
The Great Dying began Purdy, Al. |
1968: |
The Great Dying began Wild Grape Wine. McClelland and Stewart Ltd. |
The Great Dying began Purdy, Al. |
1984: |
The Great Dying began Piling Blood. McClelland and Stewart Ltd. |
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