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Al Purdy : Comments by Writers and Critics


Selected Comments


"For me, he's above all an explorer - pushing into nameless areas of landscape, articulating the inarticulate, poking around in dusty corners of memory and discovering treasure there, digging up the bones and shards of a forgotten ancestral past."

                     —Margaret Atwood, Pronuncia I nomi / Say the Names, Longo Editore, Ravenna, Italy, 1999.


""Who is he like?" you ask yourself. And in Canada there is no one.
I can't think of a single parallel in English literature. It almost seems a joke to attempt that. He was this self-taught poet from up the road. What a brave wonder."

                     —Michael Ondaatje, Forward from Beyond Remembering - The Collected Poems of Al Purdy,
                        Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, B.C., Canada, 2000.



Al Purdy's works copyright © to The Estate of Al Purdy.


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