Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996

by Al Purdy, Sam Solecki (Editor)

A selection of poems by the man described by the Globe & Mail as "the greatest of our poets." Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets includes three decades' worth of thought-provoking work, including poems from the Governor-General's Award-winning The Cariboo Horses to Naked with Summer in Your Mouth.

Purdy personally made this selection, assisted by Sam Solecki, the editor of Starting from The Collected Prose of Al Purdy . In these poems, Purdy ponders the remains of a Native village; encounters Fidel Castro in Revolutionary Square; curses a noisy cellmate in the drunk tank; and marvels at the "combination of ballet and murder" known as hockey, all in the author's inimitable man-on-the-street style.

Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets is destined to become the standard Purdy poetry volume for many years to come.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

152 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

About the author

Alfred Wellington Purdy 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".

Born in Wooler, Ontario Purdy went to Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, and Trenton Collegiate Institute in Trenton, Ontario. He dropped out of school at 17 and rode the rails west to Vancouver. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Following the war, he worked in various jobs until the 1960s, when he was finally able to support himself as a writer, editor and poet.

Honours and awards Purdy received include the Order of Canada (O.C.) in 1982, the Order of Ontario in 1987, and the Governor General's Award, in 1965 for his collection The Cariboo Horses, and again in 1986 for The Collected Poems of Al Purdy. The League of Canadian Poets gave Purdy the Voice of the Land Award, a special award created by the League to honour his unique contribution to Canada.

Al Purdy died in North Saanich, B.C., on April 21, 2000. His final collection of poetry, Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, was released posthumously in the fall of 2000.

On May 20, 2008, a large bronze statue of Purdy was unveiled in Queen's Park in downtown Toronto.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this book for more than seven or eight years, but never got into it when I tried as a younger woman. And as a slightly older woman, I'm still not entirely sure that I'm ready for this. It might resonate more with me the older I get, and maybe it's a book of poetry that I need to go back to as I age.

Here's what: Above all, somehow, Purdy is a man's man. Women are simply asides or liminal characters, and although I read male authors all the time and enjoy Cormac McCarthy, who is the master of hating women in his writing, for some reason, Purdy's disregard didn't sit well with me. I guess maybe I assume that poets are supposed to be more emotional or in tune with the relationships between people. But all I gleaned from this particular collection is that Purdy hated his wife.

Is Purdy "the voice of the Canadian vernacular," as Margaret Atwood's blurb on the back of the book says? No. He's a voice of a Canadian vernacular. That said, I think he absolutely flies when he describes humans, and sexuality, and sometimes love, and the occasional environmental/flora/fauna subject. But he does tend to fall into the Canadian rut, which is to ruminate (A LOT) on the outdoors and the harsh loneliness of Canadian geography.

But, of course, it must be said that his poem Necropsy of Love is the best poem ever written. And is the reason that I read him at all. So I can forgive all his weaker writing simply for that poem alone.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonder what screwed up philosophy
what claim to a god's indulgence
make men decide their own importance

from The Beavers of Renfrew

In this year of the centenary celebration of his life, there is no doubt as to the importance of Al Purdy. His innovative, down to earth style, prolific output, and his indisputable influence on Canadian poets and Canadian poetry set him as a peoples poet, making up his own rules as he went along. Sprawling, sometimes awkward sometimes tender, Purdy continues to surprise with the range of his attention.

...our true language
speaks from inside
the land itself

from a handful of earth 1977

Or else that's another illusion
something nice to believe in
and all of us need something
something to lift us from ourselves

from the poem Fidel Castro in Revolutionary Square

[Julie Mannell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Al Purdy is a great poet. However, this book loses points for sexism and racism which weakened the text.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I don't necessarily "like" Al Purdy's style, I definitely respect him. Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets compiles poems from thirty four years and twelve different books of poetry. It's amazing how little Purdy's style has changed over the years; aside from the index, there's no indication when the poems come from a different book...and, surprisingly, the end result is cohesive. The poems usually sprawl for two or three pages with no commas or full stops—only the occasional dash, indent, or question mark—which was either annoying or brilliant depending on my mood. It's easy to get distracted as the poems wandered ceaselessly, and I would have to go back and re-read more deliberately. His poems are about nature, history, ecology, geology, death, and the insignificance of life. Purdy brilliantly mixes the colloquial and quotidian with the profound.

On page 106 he writes about the dreaded "bouganvillea" and might be the only poet I can forgive for writing about it.

Poems that I liked:
"Spring Song," "At the Quinte Hotel," "Home-made Beer," "Trees at the Arctic Circle," "Arctic Rhododendrons," "Dark Landscape," "Lament for the Dorsets," "Over the Hills in the Rain, My Dear," "Detail," "A Handful of Earth," "May 23, 1980," "Bestiary," "Adam and No Eve," "The Smell of Rotten Eggs" (last stanza), "The Others," "Seasons," "On Being Human." Also enjoyed the Afterword.

=17/75 (22.7%) poems that I liked.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

At least one list has Al Purdy as the number one Canadian poet of all time. (With Layton at 40, I believe, and Cohen at about 57). Well, not on my list. Even when Purdy's subject matter is intriguing, I don't like how he approaches it. These poems are from 1962-1996 and I didn't much find of interest until the mid-1980s or 1990s. (The poems are not dated or even listed by previous books so it's hard to determine a date). With 30 pages left of a 150-page book, he suddenly starts writing about dinosaurs, the Pleistocene, the evolution of flowers, and Gonwanaland--and Voltaire--and his poems, to me, become markedly better and more interesting. Perhaps that may be traced back to an event in his later life. Perhaps not.

I have highlighted a dozen clever or catchy turns-of-phrase but only a few poems that enthralled me. But we each bring our own personal history to the reading poetry. Yours may give you an entirely different take on Purdy than mine. After all, he was listed at Canada's main poet for a reason.

[Andrew Sare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was Al Purdy a chauvinist or demeaning of women?
Are his critics pretty much on cue?
Can we know what his intent was when writing his poems, or level criticism at the man, not the art?
Did he really hate his wife that much?
Should this affect one's appreciation for his technical abilities, or any other quality of his work?

I have not read any external biographical information about him - just the work itself. Should the work speak for itself then?

To his critics perhaps, he claims to be a sensitive man in At the Quinte Hotel. Or maybe its just tongue-in-cheek. Have a listen, whatever your opinion of Purdy you may still enjoy this, especially if your're reeling for the sound of Gord Downie's voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKec...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with Robert Frost about tennis and handball and free verse, so Al Purdy begins somewhat handicapped for me. Purdy mentions in his Afterword that "rhyme and metre are not outdated" and "I quite often use rhyme myself, and metre as well . . . ." Purdy was brilliant craftsman of imagery, but I find it is in those moments when he lets himself be the craftsman of metre and rhyme that he is at his best, and so much of the rest can feel lazy. As wonderful as Purdy's poetry is, I think it would have benefited greatly from the greater metrical rigour of which he was certainly was capable.

[Garrett Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purdy bears his soul, flaws and all, in a wonderful collection of poems. He makes my heart ache for the boreal forests and wilderness of my childhood, and while some of it comes off dated and wouldn't fly today, there's a reason he's the blue-collar poet of a nation.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remaps a Canadian dream.

[Eriel Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who DNF missed out, the quality really improved in the second half. On the Flood Plain, Piling Blood, and The Smell of Rotten Eggs are my favourites

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's obviously a good poet but nothing really resonated with me. It got tiring reading about him bitching about his wife and close-examining the landscape.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hunting Camp

Lost and wandering in circles
the camp seen for a third time
was like stubbing your toe
on a corpse
mouldy rotten logs an open grave
but the woods myth of continual circling
comfortingly verified as accurate
seemed a remote contact with warm human wisdom

It also seemed natural to address the trees
as a people substitute
but they would not speak
made no reply to his whispering yells
although some were fat or thin
a few even looked a little friendly
but he told himself they were only trees
and said to them "you're only trees"
unsettled to hear himself
talking to a forest

That last time he saw the hunting camp
spectral with decay among the green life
something seemed to delay his own continuance
assuming continuance to be sequence of thought
at least there was a gap in his life
he couldn't explain until afterwards
his last memory standing at an open tomb
which must have been the camp - then nothing

Afterwards
new-arriving bruises were evidence
of a few seconds when his brain had stopped
but feet had carried his mindless body forward
the forgotten feet slammed against trees
forest undergrowth whipped against his face
the feet bounced a body from tree to tree
and someone who was not his someone
had lived in his body during his death
then he re-occupied but without memory
only pain-evidence and a feeling of violation
his own thoughts beginning again and searching
for the stranger in his sixteen-year-old skull

In Hawk Junction distant as the moon
but only five miles away
he heard the trains' bodies shunting together
puzzled that sound came in waves and eddies
zig-zag voices that weren't there surrounding him
quite different from leaves touching other leaves
among which if you listened long enough
you might distinguish vegetable words
and he said to the leaves "What are you saying?"

In a clearing unaware of the sun
he might have seen a hairy man with humped shoulders
passing by intent on his own purposes
and wondered whether to ask directions
and wondered if he was capable of knowing
whether the thing was a man or a bear
and felt pleasure at this this intuition of instability
comforting as a pledge of fear of fear

Whatever time was went by
contracted or explained somewhere in his skull
one thought went out to explore the brains' territory
among locked doors and doors slightly ahar
he kept arriving at blind alleys and places of no intention
- a second thought said trees had stopped speaking
a sub-thought said the trees had never spoken
but his thought consensus said they would someday
even though threes were fat or thin but not human
trains actually were the hoarse voice of reality

Cooling sweat streaked his face and it pleased him
and the word for it pleased him : anodyne
which means release and solace from terror
he thought to make a song of it singing
and managing two syllables for ever step
"O my darling O my darling Anodyne
You are lost and gone forever
dreadful sorry Anodyne"
and chuckled about the ridiculous sound
so exactly right for his regained calmness
then turning a street corner
in the forest found again
the hunting camp

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

ROOMS FOR RENT IN THE OUTER PLANETS by Al Purdy

When I first started reading this book I didn't think it was the type of poetry I would like at all, I nearly had to force myself to read it, but the style did grow on me the more I read. I didn't enjoy much of the first half, but the second half held some poems that I throughly enjoyed. (In the Beginning was the Word, On the Flood Plain, and In the Garden.) Most of the poems I felt started out flowing nicely, but had me wondering what on Earth was Al Purdy thinking at the end; to me some of the poems felt "ruined" by the ending, or an odd piece popping up in the middle of a beautiful passage. There are definitely some decent poems in this book, but the majority aren't the type I would seek out. A decent read, and at only 142 pages you might as well give it a try if you are looking to expand your poetry spectrum. Side note: I love, love, love, the title of this collection. :)

"and even tho nobody was there
to analyze it
they nevertheless produced a feeling
you couldn't put a name to
which you could only share
like moonlight on running water"

Overall Opinion: B

~Kayla
My Blog

[Andrea Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Al Purdy was one of the greatest poets our country ever had. His poems tell a story and I am inspired by his work.

"Whatever I have not discovered and enjoyed
is still waiting for me
and there will be time
but now are these floating stars on the freezing lake
and music fills the darkness
holds me there listening
-it's a matter of seperating these instances from others
that have no significance
so that they keep reflecting each other
a way to live and contain eternity
in which the moment is altered and expanded
my consciousness hung like a great silver metronome
suspended between stars
on the dark lake
and time pours itself into my cupped hands shimmering"
(From ON THE FLOOD PLAIN)

Beautiful, just beautiful.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

As you can see by my rating, this book really wasn’t my cup of tea. Poetry can be a stretch for me, but I was unable to stretch far enough to enjoy Purdy’s material. Many of the poems dealt with strange topics like hunting and drinking and bars and work, and many distinctly unpleasant subjects, like slinging sacks of powdered blood at the fertilizer plant. Definitely not what I expect from poetry. LOL! That being said, this particular passage, from a poem he wrote in the Galapagos Islands, made me smile….

FAVOURITE QUOTE:

“Sometimes the male booby
flaps his wings and dances
to entertain his mate
pointing his toes upward
so they can discuss blueness
which seems to them very beautiful”

-- excerpt from Birdwatching at the Equator [p. 109]

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up at the Bob Miller Book Room and never regretted it. My favorite poem is "Piling Blood". Just when you think your job is difficult, the poet shares what he had to do for a living. Purdy borrowed from his life to write these poems rich with sincerity. It is amazing that he was not formally educated. His self-education, perhaps, has done more for his creativity than a formalized education maybe would have.

[Knitography · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that I have a hard time relating to poetry - prose is much more my speed. Having said that, there are some truly lovely turns of phrase in this book. Purdy is at various points funny, snarky, irreverant and thoughtful. I'm still not a poetry convert, but it was a worthwhile read.

[catechism · Rating 5 out of 5]

weird, creepy, evocative, awesome.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book for Canadian poetry with Jamie Dopp.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of poetry from Canada's unofficial poet laureate.

[Jessie B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visceral but beautiful, personal but mythic. Purify is one of Canada's best poets and this is a good selection of his work.

[Kaeli Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

the rural west is full of pathos as well as blackflies and we won’t forget it

[Mag · Rating 5 out of 5]

damn good

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite poem of all time is in this book. Necropsy of Love.

[dirty derk · Rating 5 out of 5]

missing some great ones but still a good overview.