1.
A collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival.
Al Purdy
2.
I started writing when I was about thirteen.
Al Purdy
3.
In my own mind, I was sort of a desperate kid.
Al Purdy
4.
And it occurs to me that if I were aboard a rowboat floating in the middle of all the beer I've drunk in a lifetime, I'd never be able to see the shore.
Al Purdy
5.
Uneasily the leaves fall at this season, forgetting what to do or where to go; the red amnesiacs of autumn drifting thru the graveyard forest. What they have forgotten they have forgotten: what they meant to do instead of fall is not in earth or time recoverable the fossils of intention, the shapes of rot.
Al Purdy
6.
At a certain age you're always uncertain how other people will take you.
Al Purdy
7.
I'm not religious in any formal sense, not in any God sense.
Al Purdy
8.
I don't think I do have a soul.
Al Purdy
9.
I was desperately unhappy trying to adjust to the world.
Al Purdy