Through The Night Hours

Well, what does the reader want from a poem?…Primarily, I suppose, to be entertained. And that involves tuning in on some emotion or feeling or discovery that is larger and more permanent than he is. Some flashing insight that adds a new perspective to living. Values also. And that is a great deal. Most of the time it's asking far too much. 

Will you find any of these things in Cohen? Realities shoved from the periphery of your mind to forefront by the author. Not copy-book maxims, just real things and feelings. His figures swim dreamily through bedrooms, move out of Eden in slow motion, loll languorously on beaches of time. 

– Leonard Cohen: A Personal Look, "Starting from Amaliasburgh" by Al Purdy 

"There is a tireless runner in my blood,

that encircles the borderlands of Canada

through the night hours, and sleeps when day arrives. 

Then my mind awakes and the race continues... 

This is what I was and what I became...

The map of my country, the carography
(cartography, cirography?) of myself."

– Al Purdy

Ah, to witness the sheer vitality of a creative, lyrical mind that is never at rest. We are but blessed.