Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996

Purdy, Al

ISBN 10: 1550171488 / ISBN 13: 9781550171488

Published by Harbour, Madeira Park, BC, 1996

About this Item

Owner inscription, in pencil, inside front cover. 148 pages.

Seller Inventory # 15158

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996
• Publisher: Harbour, Madeira Park, BC
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1550171488
• ISBN 13: 9781550171488
• Binding: Thin Trade Paperback Original
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine Plus.
• Seller catalogs:
  • Canadian Literature

About this title

Synopsis

A selection of poems by the man described by the Globe & Mail as "the greatest of our poets." Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets includes three decades' worth of thought-provoking work, including poems from the Governor-General's Award-winning The Cariboo Horses to Naked with Summer in Your Mouth.

Purdy personally made this selection, assisted by Sam Solecki, the editor of Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy. In these poems, Purdy ponders the remains of a Native village; encounters Fidel Castro in Revolutionary Square; curses a noisy cellmate in the drunk tank; and marvels at the "combination of ballet and murder" known as hockey, all in the author's inimitable man-on-the-street style.

Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets is destined to become the standard Purdy poetry volume for many years to come.

About the Authors

Save the Al Purdy A-Frame Campaign
The Canadian League of Poets has declared a
National Al Purdy Day!



Al Purdy was born December 30, 1918, in Wooler, Ontario and died at Sidney, BC, April 21, 2000. Raised in Trenton, Ontario, he lived throughout Canada as he developed his reputation as one of Canada's greatest writers. His collections included two winners of the Governor General's Award, Cariboo Horses (1965) and Collected Poems (1986)
and other classics such as Poems for All the Annettes, In Search of Owen Roblin and Piling Blood. Later in life, he travelled widely with his wife Eurithe and settled in Ameliasburg, Ontario and Sidney, BC. In addition to his thirty-three books of poetry, he published a novel, an autobiography and nine collections of essays and correspondence. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1983 and the Order of Ontario in 1987. His ashes are buried in Ameliasburg at the end of Purdy Lane.

Sam Solecki is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and a former editor of The Canadian Forum.He is also editor of Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy and Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996. His most recent books are Ragas of Longing: The Poetry of Michael Ondaatje and The Last Canadian Poet: An Essay on Al Purdy.