Al Purdy Quotes

• They had their being once and left a place to stand on.

  Al Purdy

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• This is the country of defeat.

  Al Purdy

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• Uneasily the leaves fall at this season, forgetting what to do or where to go; the red amnesiacs of autumn drifting thru the graveyard forest. What they have forgotten they have forgotten: what they meant to do instead of fall is not in earth or time recoverable-the fossils of intention, the shapes of rot.

  Al Purdy

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• Things were so bad we ate rabbits that neighbours had run over and gave to us because they knew we were broke.

  Al Purdy

• In my own mind, I was sort of a desperate kid.

  Al Purdy

• I’m not religious in any formal sense, not in any God sense.

  Al Purdy

• I was desperately unhappy trying to adjust to the world.

  Al Purdy

• I started writing when I was about thirteen.

  Al Purdy

• I don’t think I do have a soul.

  Al Purdy

• For me, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, or for flowers or beast or bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly and perfectly alive.

  Al Purdy

• At a certain age you’re always uncertain how other people will take you.

  Al Purdy

• ‘A collected poems’ is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival.

  Al Purdy

Al Purdy (12)

Birth:	30th December, 1918
Death:	21st April, 2000
Nationality:	Canadian
Profession:	Editor, Poet, Writer

About

Alfred Wellington Purdy, OC OOnt was one of the most popular and important Canadian poets of the 20th century. Purdy's writing career spanned more than fifty years. His works include over thirty books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence. He has been called the nation's "unofficial poet laureate" and "a national poet in a way that you only find occasionally in the life of a culture."

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Births

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Deaths

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