New Releases by Al Purdy

This is a selection of 35 poems by one of Canada's best loved and most cantankerous poets, with introduction by Budde, and an Afterword by Russell Brown.

A Splinter in the Heart, Al Purdy's only novel, provides a vivid picture of Purdy's childhood home of Trenton, Ontario, in the final days of the First World War. On Thanksgiving Day in 1918, Trenton was devastated by a fire and explosion at a munitions factory owned by the British Chemical Company, the town's one big employer. All of the action in A Splinter in the Heart anticipates this cataclysm. As disaster looms, Purdy takes Patrick Cameron, his awkward and undistinguished teenage hero, through the usual elements of adolescence: he falls in love; he takes up long-distance running; his mother is courted by Trenton's firebrand preacher; his ancient grandfather, Marshall "Portugee" Cameron, dies.

MANY OF PURDY'S FAMILIAR THEMES ARE HERE--HIS EMPATHY FOR FOREIGN PLACES AND DISTANT TIMES, HIS AFFECTION FOR LOSERS AND OUTSIDERS, HIS FASCINATION WITH PRE-HISTORY AND THE FRAGMENTED RECORDS OF DEAD CIVILIZATIONS.

Poems.

Thirteen Bantu tales about the heroic Temba, who was courageous and resourceful as well as kind and who used these qualities to win the daughter of the Rain Lord.