Irving Layton Canada's Sexiest Poet
There Were No Signs
By walking I found out
Where I was going.
By intensely hating, how to love.
By loving, whom and what to love.
By grieving, how to laugh from the belly.
Out of infirmity, I have built strength.
Out of untruth, truth.
From hypocrisy, I wove directness.
Almost now I know who I am.
Almost I have the boldness to be that man.
Another step
And I shall be where I started from.
Irving Layton Canada's greatest beat poet, sexual libertine and libertarian has passed on at the age of 93. Without Layton there would be no Leonard Cohen.
Along with Al Purdy and later Cohen, Layton made up Canada's beat generation of poets and libertines. Anarchists all. While the US had Kerouac, Ginzberg and the other beats we had our own. And Layton and Purdy influenced and were respected by Ferrlingetti and the San Fransisco Beats.
As a grieving Leonard Cohen said yesterday from Montreal, "There was Irving Layton, and then there was the rest of us. He is our greatest poet, our greatest champion of poetry. Alzheimer's could not silence him, and neither will death." Mr. Layton delighted in debate, excess, defying authority and ridiculing cant. And he loved women -- their pursuit, their bodies and their company. He had five wives or partners and many mistresses. One of his former partners, Aviva Layton, said his muse was his real wife. She described his death as a "body blow."
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Layton had become a strong socialist while at high school and joined the Young People's Socialist League. Later, he became active in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Because of this activity he was blacklisted and banned from entering the United States for the next two decades. While he continued to consider himself a Marxist,
Message from Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean, Governor General of Canada, on the death of Irving Layton
OTTAWA, Jan. 5 /CNW Telbec/ - "Irving Layton was able to touch the depths
of people's souls through his works. His skills with the pen earned him the
Governor General's Literary Award and the Order of Canada, as well as many
other forms of literary recognition around the world. Yet his most precious
legacy lies in those people he has touched and the lives he has changed. Some
have called him a friend, others a colleague, and still others called him
teacher and mentor. To Canadians, though, he will be remembered as a writer
who stood for his principles and who, like a true Canadian, stood up for what
he believed.
He lived his life with a passion and a love that will be sorely missed by
his family, by his friends and by all who admired his works. My husband, Jean-
Daniel Lafond, and I wish to join with all Canadians in expressing our sadness
and condolences on the loss of this great wordsmith and icon of Canadian
literature."
Michaelle Jean
Our National Muse by Judith Fitzgerald; The Toronto Star, 1999
Allow me to tell you a little about Irving Layton, the big guy with the aggressive
ego and impressive credentials I first met behind the
poet desk at York University.
IRVING LAYTON AT 88: "THE INESCAPABLE LOUSINESS OF GROWING OLD"
LEONARD COHEN
Dear Heather
(Columbia)
US release date: 26 October 2004
UK release date: 25 October 2004
Cohen is obviously returning to his poetic past on the record, something you instantly hear on "Go No More A-Roving", a musical adaptation of the Lord Byron poem of the same name. He also dedicates three songs to three notable Montreal writers; the aforementioned song to Irving Layton, "To a Teacher" to the late A.M. Klein (the lyrics lifted from Cohen's 1961 book The Spice-Box of the Earth), and "Villanelle For Our Time", a haunting performance of a poem by Cohen's McGill University professor F. R. Scott, featuring a somber reading by Cohen, his voice deeper and more sonorous than ever. "Morning Glory" evokes the Beat jazz poetry of the late 1950s, as Cohen describes the transcendent feeling of seeing the sun rise: "No words this time...Is it censorship?" Cohen asks, "No, it's evaporation."
Having honoured the poet in the 1960s, Mr. Cohen eulogized the man 40 years later in Irving and Me at the Hospital, which will be published in May in Mr. Cohen's new collection, Book of Longing, and which is reprinted here with permission from M&S:
Irving and Me At the Hospital
He stood up for Nietzsche
I stood up for Christ
He stood up for victory
I stood up for less
I loved to read his verses
He loved to hear my song
We never had much interest
In who was right or wrong
His boxer's hands were shaking
He struggled with his pipe
Imperial tobacco
Which I helped him light
-11/24/01
Audio Archives
Irving Layton, a CKUA Memory
Canada's highly regarded poet Irving Layton, died Wednesday in Montreal. He had been in a long term care facility since 2000. The 93-year-old poet was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Layton spent much of his career as a teacher, first at a parochial high school, later at Sir George Williams University and York University where he taught English.
He was also poet-in-residence at the University of Toronto, and it was from his poetic pursuits that his fame arose. He published more than 40 books of poetry and prose in a career that spanned more than five decades.
Poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and TV magnate Moses Znaimer were some of his famous students.
His early poetry focused on sex and love, often written in frank language and shocking some critics.
He won acclaim for his first major poem, The Swimmer, in 1944. Layton's star rose rapidly in the 1950s and '60s. He soon became a regular on the CBC-TV. He was named to the Order of Canada in 1976. Layton is known for his rapier wit and ongoing battle against uniformity and Puritanism.
In December of 1985, Irving Layton visited the CKUA Radio studios and recorded this interview with Tony Dillon Davis. The interview was recorded on publication of Layton's memoir Waiting for a Messiah.
Listen to the interview (8 minutes, 54 seconds)
(In order to listen you must have Windows Media Player. To install the latest player, click here.)
Read more about Irving Layton at this CBC website: www.cbc.ca/arts/books/layton.html.
Tags
poetryLaytonCanadaBeatsCohenobituary
