Correspondence - George Bowering to Al Purdy

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CalgaryJuly 22/65Dear Al-I'm sending these poems to Trenton, & hoping somehow that they are not just going into Limbo, but with yr northiness and the current postal strike down here in Canada, I dont know where this little letter is going to end up. But you sent me a letter from Montreal again; and I'd like to answer it. Being myself 1/2 way thru teaching the summerschool class & not liking it very much; I am thinking of applying for a Canada Council grant, because Newlove got one this year, &I have another book coming out.I seem to have got hung up on long poems abt Indian monsters; Tamarack is doing one about Windigo, the Ontario maneating monster, but now I have just spent the past 2 months writing a huge long poem that Angela thinks is the best I have eveer done, about Baxbakual-anuxsiwae, the Kwakiutl monster. You'll have to see them at some time. You and yr north; me and my Indian canribals. um.I'm really looking forward to yr results from the north, in that I really think you secretly came from there in the 1st place, yr so rugged and rough, and vulgar and all, and I think the picture of you in Time magazine (Time!) was really good, i dont care what you say. But rather read what yr lines say of the north than what any pantywaist poet say abt it, aint too crazy about how esthetic and all it looks thru a falling snow crystal. Yr the second guy can see a crocodile in a drop of rain.Kearns' book: it's too bad you dont care for his new wide open style; i been waiting long time for it. The book is just a very small example of the wideness of the things he has been doing of late, great huge movie things that leap free of the usual ideas that contain poetry. Youll see. . .tired: to think, in the morning I have to get up and teach abt Dryden.got my first letter from Phyllis Webb recently, sent her some Imagos; she talks of a new book from the west coast. I havent seen Cyclic yet. Have been reading Herrick after my class lately, to relax after doing all the survey course shit in class, ignorant woman schoolteachers listen to news abt Milton, I sweat down my armpits, and a tear runs down my leg.green swirls-
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CalgarySept 19/65Dear Al-We are back from our return engagement in Mexico, wafted back on a CPA DC-8 in 41/2 hours, and it was very strange way to do it, after long drive in ancient car last summer. We got to Calgary on Sunday, no-one on the streets, 34 degrees, snow, expensive taxi, it was more than a cultural shock to find this after the streets of Mexico City only that morning (that's a week ago today, and I've been writing letters ever since, with time off every once in a while to put it in Ange, you'll be glad to hear.So back to a routine of sorts---I watched four games on TV this weekend,and listened to 1 on the radio, and lost all 5 of them; depressing, more so for Angela, she has stomped out of the house, and I havent seen her forseveral hours---she doesnt care for sports on the TV & my fishbowl eyesstaring at them. But she's a cutie.Thank you for yr good words on my ROCKY MOUNTAIN FOOT. Actually, it is a kind of foreshortened version of a book I have, & wch of course I dont expect any of our Canadian culture-publishers to publish. It is about 100 pages of poetry, all concerned with Alberta, and fair reeks with Canadiana. Maybe I shd send it to EXPO 67. I wd like to keep the title for the book, but guess I cant do that; and am wondering what to call the whole thing.In any case, my new book comes out this week in Mexico, & when I get copies I'll be sending you one, suitable inscribed, my signature reducing the value of the copy to future collectors, of course, a la Layton. Speaking of whom, he is making a tour regarding his new book, and I'll have him here, & am thinking abt whether I will challenge him on his reported USright politics.I suppose yr in England and wont get this letter till you return. Write & give us yr version of what happened over there. I'm glad you got back from Baffin alive & with a lot of poems; I'm looking forward to seeing them. I see that Dudek thinks we're part of the center of Canadian poetry (in the new Tamarind Review)..No, the textbook I'm in is not Macmillan, it's some other big publisher, and done by a lady schoolteacher from Vancouver, it turns out; and actually it is the best highschool text for poetry I've seen, doesnt have all the fir tree shit of the ones I had in school. I think it's called POETRY, an anthology for High Schools.I'm busy finishing my article on Mordecai Richler. He doesnt know I'm doing it. wait'll he finds out;
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Dear Purd-How I envy you yr new typewriter ribbon. It seems that I am doomed always to have a worn one. I either havent got the money to buy one, or I have the money & cant find a store in Calgary that sells them. And then when I do get one it wears down in shout three days. You successful poets change yr typewriters when the ribbon gets worn, I hear.Since my article in Saturday Night, groups around here have been inviting me to waste my writing time in speaking to them in public addresses and luncheon meetings and radio talks and like that. I manage to turn most of them down, tho I have never learned how to do that properly, without feeling like a bastard and a fool. Well—tomorrow I’m going up to Edmonton to be in a panel at the teach-in, let loose a couple blasts at the authorities, then come home. What a drag.Anyway I have sent you off a signed copy of my book (where am Igoing to get another published---they dont want to publish me in Can.)and dont worry about sending the copy you get from Mex. give it to someone you dont like, or keep it for opportunity to have Bowering in every room, or house. I take it yr in Ameliasburg, so that's where I been sending stuff lately.What gave you the idea that Cull is part of the good poetry thing that came out of Vancouver, or was so considered. Cull aint a good poet but more of a dabbler, as I see it, tho I might sometime in my career & life be wrong. He anyway does not deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as me and Kearns and Newlove, for example. Tch.Yr pretty good, too.Now I am playing around with the Canada Council, trying to get a grant to go to university in England next year; I decide that with a PhD Can Coun I have a better chance of getting over there, and of gettin a 2-year grant. I might even write a thesis, tho I cant imagine the Engl, universities standing for my writing style. I'm not much of a scholar.More of an asshole.Anyway, I have written 2500 words prose today, and the sun is shinin & it's only 3:30 in the afternoon. How's that for unusual me?best, let's see yr stuff here & there-
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George BoweringTHE KITCHEN TABLEInstant coffee, chili sauce, sweet relish inside arm’s reach on the tablebells from the television inthe other roomwhere there are peoplegreasy plates hereI know there are people there were people fifteen minutes agoThere is someone hereunder this facethough I pinch my thighs to be sureI know I can trust my memoryPEOPLE WHERE ARE YOU! thoughtI would be crazy to shoutThey are there there is someone here under this face
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George BoweringCalgaryCONFUCIUSWe gave him that Roman nameso we call him thinker.Thus to diminish him, tocomplete the Job with Confucius jokes.Nov 16.64
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George BoweringMEXICO (CITY)Mexico is not a burro by the road,it does it ratherwith this cityof big buildings of every century among hills.When I leave this cityI will leavu the face of the earth and entera heaven full of cactus.
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George BoweringTO BE POET—Manuel Pacheco CalgaryTo be poet is to be blue and green, bloody and palid, clean and manured.To be poet is to strip naked in the sleepless wound of a scream, an antenna of flesh to gather the howling of the world.To be poet is to throw yourself against the wall of mist that is words built between men.To be poet is to throw the stone of truth thru the plate glass windows of Carival-Religion, Carnival-Morality and Carnival-Patriotism, as long as they cover up crime and protect tyrants.To be poet is to sink all ships, bum all bridges, and go on writing over the water.To be poet is to strip the soul naked till it is a book of white pages, and let life write over them: ALL YOUR RESOUNDING.To be poet is to write the radiogram of the flower, the lips of the dew, the flight of the pigeons, the light of the dawn.To be poet is to caress children, open bird cages, and feel in your hands the calluses of the soul.To be poet is to be amazed by a head of wheat, by a drop of water, by the bees, by grass; and not to be amazed by supersonic machines, by atomic bombs, by death rays, by those guided crime missiles invented by men for the markets of destruction.To be poet is to touch money as you touch smoke, and above all, to be poet is to go down to the huts where the tongue of hunger stretches out, and proclaim to the history of progress the bitterness of enpty stomachs.To be poet is to feel a singing archangel swimming the rivers of your veins.-—translated by George Bowering|Manuel Pacheco, the Spanish poet, was born in 1930. This poem was originally published in Pajaro Cascabel (Mexico City, 1964)
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George Bowering CalgaryGOOD MORNING!In the light, grinning like a cat,tight jaw,fixed concentration in your eyes,you climb over me,heavy breasts falling on my facesmell of last night on you-—I awake!I am nakedin a birth-bedthe flat of my hands on your bum---With a mighty morning heave I roll over on youyour open familiar legs, nipple in my mouth,good morning good morning good morning my kitten good morning,goodmorning---Your wet hair against my temple,I lie on you, in you, all pink and breathing:You have brought me into life,you lie on your back, a cat,morning sleeping in the sun.
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George BoweringTHE TRAVELERI have learned this: every part of America is beautiful in its own way.And no man can be beautiful while he seeks to have it all.
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George BoweringCONTINENTAL DRIFTThat I an largely water and the earth shifts along its surface, I know, my ocean floor marked by the drift of continents.How old, my molecules, the radioactive emanations from my core, bones the structure of legs, what holds me up, standing, moving laterally across the earth's surface.History not yet contains me. Each lungful of cigarette smoke expelled into the air around me, uncared for by fish at the bottom of the sea.Each creature aims his nose at his own part in the scheme. Burping against new volcanoes maybe,maybe watching an apartment building rise across the street.When I walk past anything like that I feel my body sloshing, the convection at my core. We are after all not our surface.This is given us to understand, and here by "us" I mean myself,this is given us to understand by our neighbor the deep sea fish.

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