Lament for the DorsetsAl 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 Purdy’s 1968 collection, Wild Grape Wine, is a quintessentially Canadian poem from Canada’s superstar-poet of the 1960s. “Lament for the Dorsets” appeared at a stage in Purdy’s career in which he had matured in both vision and technique. The poem is informed by Purdy’s experience during the summer of 1965, during which he wrote poems in a tent in an Inuit village on Baffin Island, located in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The Dorsets of the poem’s 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 Americans—because 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 BiographyOne 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 Canada’s 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 help of the Canadian government’s support for artists, Purdy began writing full time, supplementing his income with reading, speaking, and 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-General’s award.

Purdy’s 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 underdogs—be 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, Purdy’s independence has made him one of Canada’s 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                    5

—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                                  10

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                                         15

  killers of seals 

they couldn’t compete with little men

who came from the west with dogs 

Or else in a warm climatic cycle                       20

the seals went back to cold waters 

and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads 

with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D.

—couldn’t figure it out

went around saying to each other                       25

plaintively

    ‘What’s wrong? What happened?

    Where are the seals gone?’ 

#And died

Twentieth century people                               30

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                  35

squatting among the moving glaciers

six hundred years ago

with glowing lamps?

As remote or nearly

as the trilobites and swamps                           40

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                           45

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?                                      50

Let’s 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                                 55

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                          60

bearing down and transmitting

his body’s weight

from brain to arm and right hand

and one of his thoughts

turns to ivory                                         65

The carving is laid aside

in beginning darkness

at the end of hunger

after a while wind

blows down the tent and snow                           70

begins to cover him

After 600 years

the ivory thought

is still warm

Poem SummaryLines 1-12The first stanza, or section, is actually one sentence describing …

Lament for the DorsetsI 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 couldn’t 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.

– couldn’t figure it out

went around saying to each other

plaintively..............

'What’s 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?

Let’s 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 body’s 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 Dorsetsby Kathryn Bjornson

En Francais

I have found Canadian poetry useful in enriching my high school Canadian history course.

When teaching Aboriginal migrations into Canada’s 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 Canada’s 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 here, 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 poet’s imagination. 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 CitedAl Purdy. “Lament for the Dorsets.” ROOMS FOR RENT IN THE OUTER PLANETS: SELECTED

POEMS 1962-1996. Ed. Al Purdy and Sam Solecki. Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing,

1996. 68-70.

BiographyKathryn Bjornson is a poet and educator who lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Her work has appeared in THE ANTIGONISH REVIEW, THE NASHWAAK REVIEW,

FREEFALL, and THE MOM EGG. She teaches English and Canadian History at Sacred Heart School of Halifax, where she also runs a creative writing club for students.