Lament for the Dorsets

Al Purdy 1968 Author Biography Poem Text Poem Summary Themes Style Historical Context Critical Overview Criticism Sources For Further Study Lament for the Dorsets, from Al Purdys 1968 collection, Wild Grape Wine, is a quintessentially Canadian poem from Canadas superstar-poet of the 1960s. Lament for the Dorsets appeared at a stage in Purdys career in which he had matured in both vision and technique. The poem is informed by Purdys experience during the summer of 1965, during which he wrote poems in a tent in an Inuit village on Baffin Island, located in Canadas Northwest Territories. The Dorsets of the poems title are a people who are distant ancestors of contemporary Inuits. The name derives from Cape Dorset, situated on the southwest coast of Baffin Island. Dorset civilization was spread over an extensive area of northern Canada and is thought to have existed for approximately two thousand years. While the Dorset people became extinct in the fourteenth century, a remnant of their culture has been preserved in the tiny tools and artifacts they left behind. Although Purdy is a prolific poet who has published more than 600 poems, Lament for the Dorsets is one of the few known to Americans if indeed Purdy is known at all to Americansbecause it was included in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1986). Lament for the Dorsets is an elegy for a unique civilization that died out because it was unable to survive in changing conditions or because it was pushed out by a more technologically sophisticated people (the Thule). The poem, however, is not just a lament. It is also a paean to the permanence of art and the importance of the artist to the life of a people. Purdy shows that a tiny carving of an ivory swan is what enables the Dorsets to live beyond their graves until their civilization is discovered some 600 years later.

Author Biography
One would be hard put to find a more prolific poet than Al Purdy. As of 1989, Purdy had thirty-seven books of verse, one novel, an autobiography, a memoir, several edited collections, and two books of correspondence one with critic and scholar George Woodcock and the other with barfly-poet Charles Bukowski. Purdy is also one of Canadas most eminent poets: his numerous awards and prizes include the Order of Canada (1987). Though hardly known in the United States, four of his poems are included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Born December 30, 1918, Purdy was raised by his mother, his father having died when Alfred was two. Purdy went to college and served as a non-combatant in the air force during World War II. His many jobs and avocations include riding the rails, running a taxi business, and five years making mattresses. At age thirteen, he began writing poetry and published his first poems in The Enchanted Echo (1944), a volume he paid for and later referred to as crap. By the 1960s, with the h elp of the Canadian governments support for artists, Purdy began writing full time, supplementing his income with reading, speaking, an d teaching engagements. Up until 1962, Purdy said his style was derivative, but he asserts that with Poems for All the Annettes he had abandoned traditional rhythm and stanza forms for ones demanded by the poem being written. Other critics have disagreed as to when Purdy broke through to his own style: some say it was with The Crafte So Longe to Lerne (1959). Others say it was The Cariboo Horses(1965), for which he won the Governor-Generals award. Purdys style is singular: I believe that when a poet fixes on one style or method he severely limits his present and future development. By the same token I dislike the traditional forms. But I use rhyme, metre, and (occasionally) standard forms when a poem seems to call for it. In subject matter, Purdy is firmly Canadian and also a poet of underdogsbe they workers, prisoners, or Eskimos. He is also a poet more of the immanent than the transcendental, of earthly more than fantastic worlds. Finally, in reception, Purdys independence has made him one of Canadas most respected and most popular poets: a nonacademic respected by the academy and a popular poet whose poetry shuns pop. Purdy is the consummate autodidact and individual, and in this sense is a poet not only of and for Canada but for the United States.

Poem Text
(Eskimos extinct in the 14th century A.D.)
Animal bones and some mossy tent rings scrapers and spearheads carved ivory swans all that remains of the Dorset giants who drove the Vikings back to their long ships talked to spirits of earth and water a picture of terrifying old men so large they broke the backs of bears so small they lurk behind bone rafters in the brain of modern hunters among good thoughts and warm things and come out at night to spit on the stars The big men with clever fingers who had no dogs and hauled their sleds over the frozen northern oceans awkward giants killers of seals they couldnt compete with little men who came from the west with dogs Or else in a warm climatic cycle the seals went back to cold waters and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D. couldnt figure it out went around saying to each other plaintively Whats wrong? What happened? Where are the seals gone? #And died Twentieth century people apartment dwellers executives of neon death warmakers with things that explode they have never imagined us in their future how could we imagine them in the past squatting among the moving glaciers six hundred years ago with glowing lamps? As remote or nearly as the trilobites and swamps when coal became or the last great reptile hissed at a mammal the size of a mouse that squeaked and fled Did they ever realize at all what was happening to them? Some old hunter with one lame leg a bear had chewed sitting in a caribou skin tent the last Dorset? Lets say his name was Kudluk carving 2-inch ivory swans for a dead grand-daughter taking them out of his mind the places in his mind where pictures are He selects a sharp stone tool to gouge a parallel pattern of lines on both sides of the swan holding it with his left hand bearing down and transmitting his bodys weight from brain to arm and right hand and one of his thoughts turns to ivory 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

The carving is laid aside in beginning darkness at the end of hunger after a while wind blows down the tent and snow begins to cover him After 600 years the ivory thought is still warm 70

Poem Summary
Lines 1-12
The first stanza, or section, is actually one sentence describing

Lament for the Dorsets

I was asked to listen to some 1960's recordings made of bird calls in Canada. To do this we had to dust off the reel to reel machine which has been languishing on the top shelf of the store cupboard for years.

Listening to the recordings made 40+ years ago it took my mind back to my younger days when my parents had a reel to reel machine and I'd watch the tape on the spools increase or decrease depending on which direction they were going. Somewhere in the recesses of a box at home are recordings my parents made on their machine of Christmas parties and so on. My father was a great one for recording events on tape. I must retrieve them and find out who or what is on there. Many of those I guess will sadly be long gone to the great audio machine in the sky. I love old technology and using this machine at work was joy. All moving parts, easy to work out how it works, no manuals or complicated handsets, or Windows XP programmes to crash. Just a mechanical machine, some spools and a tape. Not all of the past was good, but I think we have lost something of the simplicity of life with the arrival of ever more complex computers. I love computers, after all I'd not be able to blog if we still had pencil and paper, but just now and again using something which is simple is a joy. Speaking of the past, while researching subjects on Greenland this week I discovered, there is a culture called the Dorset culture. The Dorset culture (also called the Dorset Tradition) was a Paleo-Eskimo culture around (500 BC - AD 1500) that preceded the Inuit in North America. and why were they called the Dorset culture? Well in 1925 they were discovered in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, by anthropologist Diamond Jenness. And so as this is a blog about Wessex, an area Thomas Hardy created as he lamented the passing of the old ways, I found this by a Canadian poet, the late Al Purdy who wrote a poem entitled "Lament for the Dorsets" This poem laments the loss of their culture and describes them and their end. Need I say more. Lament for the Dorsets (Eskimos extinct in the 14th century A.D.) Animal bones and some mossy tent rings

scrapers and spearheads carved ivory swans all that remains of the Dorset giants who drove the Vikings back to their long ships talked to spirits of earth and water a picture of terrifying old men so large they broke the backs of bears so small they lurk behind bone rafters in the brain of modern hunters among good thoughts and warm things and come out at night to spit on the stars The big men with clever fingers who had no dogs and hauled their sleds over the frozen northern oceans awkward giants..........................killers of seal they couldnt compete with the little men who came from the west with dogs Or else in a warm climatic cycle The seals went back to cold waters and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D. couldnt figure it out went around saying to each other plaintively.............. 'Whats wrong? What happened?.............. Where are the seals gone? And died Twentieth century people apartment dwellers

executives of neon death warmakers with things that explode they have never imagined us in their future how could we imagine them in the past squatting among the moving glaciers six hundred years ago with glowing lamps? As remote or nearly as the trilobites and swamps when coal became or the last great reptile hissed at a mammal the size of a mouse that squeaked and fled Did they realize at all what was happening to them? Some old hunter with one lame leg a bear had chewed Sitting in a caribou skin tent the last Dorset? Lets say his name was Kudluk carving 2-inch ivory swans for a dead grand-daughter taking them out of his mind the places in his mind where pictures are He selects a sharp stone tool to gouge a parallel pattern of lines on both sides of the swan holding it with his left hand bearing down and transmitting

his bodys weight from brain to arm and right hand and one of his thoughts turns to ivory The carving is laid aside in beginning darkness at the end of hunger after a while wind blows down the tent and snow begins to cover him After 600 years the ivory though is still warm Al Purdy, 2000

Canadian Poets Across the Curriculum: Al Purdy and the Dorsets

by Kathryn Bjornson En Francais I have found Canadian poetry useful in enriching my high school Canadian history course. When teaching Aboriginal migrations into Canadas north, I have the students read Lament for the Dorsets by Al Purdy. I then use the following activity to reinforce the connection between the past and the present and the tension between archaeological evidence and the imagination. The activity is adaptable for any classroom situation from grades 10 through 12. By the time I introduce this poem, students have already studied different theories of Aboriginal origins in North America. They have been briefed on the clash between archaeological evidence, which suggests that Canadas earliest peoples migrated here from other parts of the globe, and Aboriginal art and oral history, which support the belief that this continent is where they originated or emerged. My students have explored the role of concrete evidence in formulating migration theories as well as the role of the imagination and close observation of the natural world in the development of mythological theories of origin. I make it clear that no history lesson can reconcile these two paradigms, but that the dichotomy between evidence and the imagination is not as clear cut as it may at first seem. After covering the Dorset and the later Thule cultures, I ask students to formulate theories about why one culture may have out-survived another in an environment with limited resources and an inhospitable climate. I

also point out that the present-day Inuit are the descendents of the Thule, whose survival has been attributed to close cooperation and communication. After reading the poem, I ask students to construct two comparative tables with two columns each. In one table, they should write down words, phrases, and/or images from the poem that concern the past and the present. In the column for the past, students write phrases like terrifying old men (line 6) and the trilobites and swamps / when coal became (line 40-1). In the column for the present, they write phrases like apartment dwellers / executives of neon death (lines 31 -2) and things that explode (line 33). There is an obvious indictment of the present her e, and it is fruitful to point out how bizarre, even horrifying, our modern world might look to an outsider from the past. Discussion of this comparison of past and present can take its own course, but the crux of this theme in the poem comes from the lines, they have never imagined us in their future / how could we imagine them in the past (lines 34-35). This two-way view of the difficulty of imagining both the future and the past can lead into a discussion on the very nature of historical record, bias, and accuracy. This is a good place to move on to the second comparative table, in which I ask them to write in one column elements from the poem that might be archaeological artefacts and in the other column elements that have come from the poets imaginat ion. In the first column, they write things like mossy tent rings (line 1) and carved ivory swans (line 2). In the second column, they write the name Kudluk (line 61) and the scenario concerning his last hours. In discussing these comparisons, I try to steer the students towards recognizing the interconnection between imagination and concrete evidence. It is a good place to point out that archaeologists and historians have to carefully use their imaginations to shape together the evidence they find. It is also clear that without the concrete world, we would have no place from which to launch our imaginations in the production of art, whether mythology, carvings, or a poem. I conclude this activity by asking students to return to their initial predictions about why the Thule out-survived the Dorsets, and to examine the poem for possible explanations. They point out that the little men / who came west with dogs (lines 18-9) may have had technological and physical advantages over the Dorset giants (line 3) who had no dogs and hauled their sleds / over the frozen Northern oceans (lines 14-15). Climate change is also offered as an explanation in the poem: Or else in a warm climatic cycle / the seals went back to cold waters (20-21), something students can relate to as a present-day issue. As a current events extension to this activity, I ask them to search for news articles on climate change affecting economies based on hunting and fishing. This cements the interplay between the present and the past that is one of the major concerns of historical study.

Works Cited
Al Purdy. Lament for the Dorsets. ROOMS FOR RENT IN TH E OUTER PLANETS : SELECTED POEMS 1962-1996. Ed. Al Purdy and Sam Solecki. Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 1996. 68-70.

Biography
Kathryn Bjornson

is a poet and educator who lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Her work has appeared in T HE ANTIGONISH REVIE W , T HE NASHWAAK REVIEW , FREEFALL , and T HE MOM EGG . She teaches English and Canadian History at Sacred Heart School of Halifax, where she also runs a creative writing club for students.