I guess it’s painfully clear that I’m an American writing about a Canadian poet, because when I Googled Al Purdy’s “At the Quinte Hotel” I found that the title of the poem had been used in a short film, a rather famous short film as it turns out.

Still, if you’re not Canadian, perhaps you’ll find this poem as refreshing as I do:

AT THE QUINTE HOTEL

I am drinking
I am drinking beer with yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
And I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man too
so I tell him about his beer
I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half yellow horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in one corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
as I watch with interest
A wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toilet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ass-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
“You shouldn’ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it”
So he says to me “Come on.”
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him
(he is a little guy)
and say reprovingly
“Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?”
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
“What kind of poems?”
“Flower poems”
“So tell us a poem”
I got off the little guy reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for Literature
and moved by the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
“— the poem oughta be worth some beer”
It was a mistake of terminology
for silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beers or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man.

Though I can’t decide if the poem sounds more like Charles Bukowski or Robert Service, I prefer it to either of their poetry . Somehow the fact that it deals with the problem of being a “real man” while also being “sensitive” redeems the poem in my eyes. The fact that it does it humorously is an added benefit, because it’s not a topic that most men who like poetry would want to deal with any other way.

I don’t know about you, but I developed a real prejudice against poetry in the early years of school because too many of the poems I was taught were far too “sensitive“ for my taste. I did not want to memorize “The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the 4th grade. Most of the “Romantic” poetry I was exposed to in high school turned me off, often seeming overly sensitive.

Few men I know want to be known as being “sensitive,” preferring to be known for other traits. My mother told me that I used to hide in the closet when I cried, apparently unwilling to let my older brother know he’d hurt my feelings. I still prefer to be by myself when tragedy occurs, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually cried in my lifetime, usually preferring to express myself in a few not-so-carefully chosen words.

I didn’t take any poetry books with me when I went to Vietnam though there was lots of time to read on the ship over. I was about as likely to reveal to my platoon that I liked poetry as I was to reveal that I was terrified by the snakes that seemed to be everywhere.

What makes the poem work so perfectly, then, is the admission that writing, and reading, poetry is a way of being sensitive, though the poet in the poem seems anything but sensitive. Or, at the very least, a sensitive man can still be a rough-and-tumble sort of guy who can kick ass when it’s really needed.

Although Al Purdy’s “Over the Hills in the Rain, My Dear” describes an incident I’ve experienced more times than I care to remember, it’s not the kind of incident that I’d try to express in a poem. Perhaps that’s why Purdy is a famous poet, and I’m hardly a poet at all.

OVER THE HILLS IN THE RAIN, MY DEAR

We are walking back from the Viking site,
dating ten centuries ago
(it must be about four miles),
and rain beats on us,
soaks our clothes,
runs into our shoes,
makes white pleats in our skin,
turns hair into decayed seaweed:
and I think sourly that drowning
on land is a helluva slow way to die.
I walk faster than my wife,
then have to stop and wait for her:
“It isn’t much farther,”
I say encouragingly
and note that our married life
is about to end in violence,
judging from her expressionless expression.
Again I slop into the lead,
then wait in the mud till she catches up,
thinking, okay, I’ll say something complimentary:
“You sure are a sexy looking mermaid dear!”
That didn’t go down so good either,
and she glares at me like a female vampire
resisting temptation badly;
at which point I’ve forgotten
all about the rain,
trying to manufacture
a verbal comfort station,
a waterproof two seater.
We squelch miserably into camp
about half an hour later,
strip down like white shriveled slugs,
waving snail horns at each other,
cold sexless antennae
assessing the other ridiculous creature —
And I begin to realize
one can’t use a grin like a bandaid
or antidote for reality,
at least not all the time:
and maybe it hurts my vanity
to know she feels sorry for me,
and I don’t know why:
but to be a fool
is sometimes
my own good luck.

L’Anse aux Meadows, Nfld.

While most great hikes blend into a dreamy haze, the disastrous hikes seem to remain as vivid as the moment you lived them. And though I sometimes joke that my worst day hiking is better than my best day teaching, that’s certainly a faulty generalization, one that’s called into question by the kind of day Purdy describes, which, unfortunately, is not a terribly unusual event here in the rainy Pacific Northwest.

Of course, being a man, no matter what the conditions it’s necessary to buck up the women on the hike with cheerful chatter, and that’s especially true if the hike is more miserable than usual, though I’ve never asked a woman her opinion on the matter. Still, I have sensed a similar disenchantment when I’ve encouraged my wife to go hiking or cross-country skiing with me when the conditions have turned out to be less than optimum.

There’s few things more romantic that a strenuous hike and a meal beside a roaring campfire, but nothing squelches desire faster than a bucket of cold water, unless it’s a steady downpour of cold rain.

It’s always a little surprising then when such trips stand out in your memory, and somehow provide stronger ties than all those great hikes.

One of the hazards of reading a famous poet for the first time is you’ll discover “great” poems that everyone else already knows like when I suggested that Al Purdy’s “At the Quinte Hotel”was one of my favorite of his early poems. When I went to Google “On Being Human” to see if I could avoid having to type it out, I discovered that it, too, is one of Purdy’s most famous poems. I guess I can either congratulate myself that I have such good taste in poetry or worry I’ve become so jaded with poetry that I only have an appetite for the kind of stereotypical poetry that fills the bookshelves at chain bookstores.

I’ll take the chance that I am exposing my jadedness and suggest that this is may be my very favorite poem from in rooms for rent in the outer planets:

ON BEING HUMAN

When my mother went to the hospital
after a fall alone in her bedroom
I was eighteen miles away
trying to build a house

I visited her later
and something in my face made her say
“I thought you’d feel terrible�?
and she meant that I’d be devastated
by what had happened to her
— I wasn’t feeling anything very much
at the time and I guess it showed
just thinking I’d have to travel
those eighteen miles every day
to visit her and grumbling to myself
At that moment
she had seen behind the shutters
normally drawn across the human face
and suddenly realized
there wasn’t much if any
affection for her in my face
and that knowledge
was worse than her injuries.

But there is no going back in time
to do anything about it now
if something wasn’t done then
and nothing was
She died not much later
her mind disoriented
forgetting what happened to her
but I remember those last words
list them first
among the things I’m ashamed of
as intolerable as realizing
your whole life has been wated
— remembering my cousin’s words
about her drunken brother:
“It would have been better
if he’d never lived at all�?

I remember those last words
before the fever took her mind
and the only good thing now
is thinking about those words
and she is instantly
restored to life
in my mind
and repeats the same words
“I thought you’d feel terrible.�?
again and again and again
and I’m still ashamed
and I’m still alive

Fortunately I’m not haunted by a particular moment with either of my parents, though I’m sure that I’ve been guilty of such moments, as have most of us. We get so busy living our lives that we resent it when someone, even those we love the most, demand our attention.

It’s very human to see the world from your own viewpoint, at least until some dramatic event forces us to see it from another’s viewpoint. Even though we know that we should be more concerned about others, our current priorities make us think that our priorities should be everyone’s priorities.

If someone my age told me that they didn’t have a single regret in life, I’d surmise that they were so self-centered they’d be dangerous to be around. People say you should live your life without regret precisely because everyone, except psychopaths, have regrets. What kind of monster wouldn’t feel bad, wouldn’t regret, making his mother feel unloved? Regret is our conscience’s way of trying to make us live our lives the way we really want to lead them, not the way we think we want to lead them.

Before leaving Al Purdy’s Selected Poems 1962-1996 I wanted to touch on a perhaps more traditional, more poetical poem called:

ON THE FLOOD PLAIN

Midnight:
it’s freezing on the lake
and wind whips ice eastward
but most of the water remains open
—and stars visit earth
tumbled about like floating candles
on the black tumulus
then wind extinguishes the silver fire
but more flash down
and even those reflections reflect
on the side of waves
even the star’s reflections reflect stars

Ice:
far older than the earth
primordial as the Big Bang
—cold unmeasured by Celsius and Fahrenheit
quarreling about it on a Jurassic shingle
—before Pangaea and Gondwanaland
arrive here in the 20th century
born like a baby
under the flashlight beam
Bend down and examine the monster
and freeze for your pains
—tiny oblong crystals
seem to come from nowhere
little transparent piano keys
that go tinkle tinkle tinkle
while the wind screams
—and you feel like some shivering hey
presto god grumbling at his fucked-up weather
hurry indoors hurry indoors to heaven

People have told us we built too near the lake
“The flood plain is dangerous�? they said
and no doubt they know more about it than we do
—but here wind pressed down on new-formed ice
trembles it like some just-invented musical instrument
and that shrieking obligato to winter
sounds like the tension in a stretched worm
when the robin has it hauled halfway out of the lawn
I stand outside
between house and outhouse
feeling my body stiffen in fossilized rigor mortis
and listening
thinking
this is the reason we built on the flood plain
damn right
the seriousness of things beyond your understanding

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 separating these instants 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

Personally, this Romantic view of the world is much closer to my view of the world than the earlier “At the Quinte Hotel” I cited because, unless you count the time I had to be dragged away from the drunken sergeant asserting how much he really want to go to Vietnam with us while bragging about his heroic exploits in the Korean War, I’ve never been in a bar fight and have, actually, assiduously avoided them since heading off to college and finding better ways of asserting my manhood.

I’ve enjoyed moments precisely like this while out cross country skiing, moments when my cheekbones ache and eyes water while fighting my way across a wind-blown clearing, simultaneously admiring the ferocity of the storm and wondering why the hell I keep exposing myself to such pain.

There is something in nature I constantly use to gauge myself, even though in the end I always find myself lacking, and find new strength in that lacking.

If you’re interested in reading an even more traditional reading of this traditional poem, you can find an interesting academic analysis of it here