Last week, I posted an image of Northrop Frye with a dump of snow on his head. I forgot to mention that Northrop Frye’s statue has a neighbour: Al Purdy’s statue sits across the road in Queen’s Park. Norrie and Al can’t see each other, and for three reasons. First, each is seated facing away from the other. Second, even if they were facing one another, Northrop Frye Hall obstructs the view. And third, they’re lumps of metal and lumps of metal don’t have functioning eyes. Below, I’ve posted a photo of Al Purdy’s statue which I caught in a lovely early morning light. In the summertime, a man stands in front of him each morning and does T’ai Chi. Al watches closely. I think this year he may join in.
You may be wondering: where’s the indignity in this? Glad you asked. The fact that Al Purdy is forced to sit in the middle of a park while squirrels hump on his lap isn’t the indignity. It turns out Al Purdy’s statue has a twitter account @statueofalpurdy. That isn’t the indignity either. The indignity is that @statueofalpurdy messaged me with an offer to help me lose 20 lbs of fat in less than 2 weeks.
Obviously, he’s been watching me each morning as I walk my dog through the park. Maybe he’s getting back at me for that time she peed on the grass right in front of him. (In fairness, @statueofalpurdy has since apologized for his (its?) account getting compromised.) Even so, you”d think a poet might have something more interesting to say. In the meantime, let’s enjoy one of Al Purdy’s better known poems titled, appropriately enough, The Dead Poet. In the poem, he speaks of the (dead) brother before him who “wrote on the walls of flesh”, an observation made poignant by the fact that this poet has been cast in bronze and has no flesh left to himself (while I have 20 lbs of fat). The poem appears in The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English, ed. Margaret Atwood. You can read it at University of Toronto Libraries’ Canadian Poetry Online