Correspondence - George Bowering to Al Purdy
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George Bowering Ste 2127 Thirteenth Ave, N.E. Calgary, AlbertaHISTORY IS USIf names are history here I offer mineto add two years timetold with proper nouns"In 1905, Alberta took shape on tho map of Canada; but history was recorded on the face of Alberta many years before that."I find history is towns ---Medicine Hat, Albertawhere serpent told Creebrave to throw his wife into the waterwhich he did for power & an old man’s hatto kill the Blackfoot.(So history again is death)only to be wasted forWetaskiwin, Alberta(where my father was bom)
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& peace between Blackfoot & Cree,that is,wi-ta-ski-oo cha-ka-tin-alsoPeace Point,Cheneka.(or rather, history is pact.)High River, Alberta,Okotoks, Ponoka, Kananaskis, Kahwin,Etzikom, Netook, buffalo tracks---Bow River, for weapons & the white man& later his names, the oddments of his mapmade not from grass but paper.Proper.Or it could be said:property,which is another name for history.Which I cant expect to bring.Other than that,I can name my wife& unborn childrensome other place.
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Dear Al=Beginning to make forays into other accesible parts of Alta now, on weekends, horrible thot that i can start to wait for weekends, when I have denied weekend for so long, working on Sat nights et al. This weekend we went to the dinosaur badlands arnd Drumheller, the weekend before we were climbing toward the glacie r back of Lake Louise first time Ive ever been to LL, tho I have passt thru the RR station so many times, in airforce especially. We have struck up friendship with Paul Richter, a painter from NY who is for some reason come here to teach Philosophy, mainly to get away fr ex-wife, and for the fairly big money & light teaching load I think. He is at last someone to talk to abt things I'm interested in, the NY scene, Painters and theater and all those cultural things.Glad to hear the will business was finally settled, and you got a little cusion now, tho i suspect lawyers and such, and suspect you got somewhat hosed, but glad yez can rest a bit. We will prob ly be coming did I tell you to Toronto this winter, arnd Xmas holiday, for work on CBC play, at least thats what they lead me to think, and we'll see yez then, line up a dual reading at one of the pretentious sounding TO coffee places, eh? VA Coleman % and those hustelers really working. Saw Island, and was put down by the format but like the idea of seeing Amerk and Can. poets there togehter.IMAGO 2 is at the printer here out they are Hanging me up I think because they dont like the dirty wds in it, you have to live in Albrta to believe it. Also I havent got the money to pay for the printing, but I'll try to put them off, the issue is pretty good I think, look for yrs pretty soon, with groovy dark green cover.If you are coming here in the winter we aint got a bed but we got a six foot couch, and if you aint put too much beer fat on since i last lamped eyes on you, you shd fit into it, its yrs anyway, as it has also been Jamie Reids and wife who have hitch hiked up to see us twice, hes now working as the guy who gives out relief checks in the Cranbrook region, and of course he digs that & gives out as many as he can and fucks up their BC system of frugality and preaching...I just finisht writing my book of hip poems for little kids, does it make sense to send it to M&S or whom?be st-
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CalgaryShit, I just look and see yr letter came a month ago! You shd see the pile of things on my desk; 15 letters to answer, two feet pile of lit mags to read (I notice you took over the Tamoshanter Review this time---I have lookt at the poems, not the story, and will read both overas soon as I can; the poems I can see ((hear)) are vry strong—whteverthat means---you have developed like a starlet in the last 5 years)and five manuscripts open, half done, my diary staring me in the face, lectures to give on, phuk, Milton---plans to write many and greatthings. So I am writing you.I would have written earlier, but I have not communicated in any direction since Red died. Jamie told me he wrote and told you. I have never lost anyone that close, Red was closer to me than anyone, and I cant find words to talk abt it, I think of yr poem in TR, but that was an older man, I’ve known Red since I was 18, and, I havent been able to get myself together, I stop many times a day and I cant get myself out of it, sitting at a party on Saturday night, suddenly crying for an hour, sitting there my eyes like blood. Shit, someday I will be able to talk about it. Now—just believe me.We are leaving for Toronto (90 percent sure) on the train leaves here thursday, gets into Toronto Sat night, the 19th. I think in the early evening, be there till NYeve when we have to get back on the train.We havent got berths, have to sit up all the way both ways. I want to get together with you for nights in Toronto with other poets, see how you and they operate in hogtown. I dont think I'll be doing any TV work, havent heard from them for 2 months; but Colomvo fixing me up with a radio thing, I think, also a reading at BE.Abt yr reading: we will be able to fix up a time wher I am there. Jan would be fine I think; rumor has it Birney to come here in Feb., and it would be great if yr reading cd coincide with publication of yr book (or nearly). This time no Creeley for you to aggravate and for him to try to scratch my eyes out etc.What about Buffalo? I want to go there for a day or two. Any cheap way to get there?Word filters down (Red told me last letter) that Acorn has gone to try to live in Seattle where there is a girl he might get involved a lot with, havent heard any more on that. Great news about people in Vancouver getting in on mariuana things. Bill Bissett was the last person to get off with suspended sentence, next week a couple student got 6 months and a year. Newlove says Bissett has jumped his parole and gone to the united states.I dont quite know what Wah has against me, but I think it has something to do with the fact that I write poetry like me instead of like Charle s Anyway one night he told me earnestly how everyone was disappointed in me, and then he tried to put the make on Angela. He'll really be pissed off when my next book comes out; Oct 1/65.I dont see why you like Cohen. I may be stupid when I come to reading his stuff, and maybe he's a genius I cant get thru to, but his stuff, including the new book, strikes me as fake. It seems as if he is trying
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2to put something across on the reader & publisher. I dont see how you can say he's got craft. He writes the most unmusical, unengaged, unintense stuff I have seen in unrime. The other night on TV when he said one thing, I saw more in him than I have seen in 3 books of poems and one 'novel'.I really am sorry this letter took so long to come. I promise I will writie every week if you will too, deal?best,I cant wait to see yr book. I think it will be far better than anythirg MC&ST has done in years, I mean that seriously!
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Calgary---Feb 16/65Dear Al-I dont know if yr back in Ontario yet, but I'll send this there now in any case. From steadies that filtered here abt yr exploits in Vancouver I am led to believe you may never make it back east, but I'm taking that chance. I send you these 2 clippings, one from the Albertan, and the other from the carpus paper. Either or neither may be interesting.I am hard at work on IMAGO 3 tho it is very late in coming out; I am nevertheless working on it.I got the Fifflehead the day after you left, and I must say thanks a pleanty for the things you sd. There was a smaller review in Poetry (Chicago) that said ah um somethings good some bad ah hum. I preferred yours, tho.How did you make out with Birney? You have to write me and tell me all about yr experiences in Vancouver. I can tell you that I listened to the interview we did on the radio here, and it surprised me; it came off much better than it sounded at the time.Anxiously awaiting yr book. I have decided to call mine THE MAN IN YELLOW BOOTS. See if you can figger out why.You'll be pleased to hear that Davey is trying to get Creeley's novel on his English lit course at Royal Roads.yrs truly,L
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George Bowering,CalgaryJuly 9/65Dear Al-I dont know if this is going to get to you up there on the roof of the world, or whether you'll have to wait till you come back down, but I owe it to you, & so here comes (probably) nothing. Except what a strange week this is: I hear that the Canadian textbook with my poem in has been published, and that I got a poem coming up in a Mexican textbook. Stranger than that is the fact that the latter is done by the dept, of education, and the poem is a strong anti-FBI poem. Can you imagine a Canadyen dept of educ. doing such a thing? I cd have writ you when you were in Mtl, but I didnt get yr letter till I arrived back here fr the Coast, & it was already after yr departure for the ice. What's it like up there? Does it look like the Grp of Seven paintings? I am beginning slightly to come round to yr notion that Cohen's early lyrics arent too bad, but the new stuff remains awful. Right now I'm reading a Rich-ler novel, my first (The Acrovats), and disappointed to find it is such an amateur job. Some professor told me it is his best work. Whew. Do you know of a wild French-Can. called Gerald Robitaille? He writes the wildest sexiest good stuff, and is consequently ignored by the Canadian libraries, publishers, and critics. But if you havent read him, see if you can sometime. He clears a lot of the air around the stuffy established Canadian novels.I'm really pisst off abt the reports of Layton I have heard, that he has been writing pro-American letters to the Montreal paper, warning abt the creeping Red Horde in Viet Nam and Dominica; I also hear that Dudek has been answering by saying Layton is an imperialist. What the fuck is going on? Where did you get the impression that I like Reaney? I sure wasnt trying to say that in my Edge review. I was saying he was an intellectual in order to warn people. After reading the review again, I see that I shd have been more overt. Hey, what a nutty idea! You doing an anthology, I mean. Boy, wd I like to see that book!Shit, I started a lil poem abt the cannibals amoung the Kwakiutl, & so far I am at page 9 (typed) I dont know when it is going to end. Hey, write, eh? Tell me what snow is like-
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