Fornalutx: Selected Poems, 1928-1990

Brian Trehearne provides an lyric introduction that explores the voices and vision of Layton’s poetry, particularly the present collection.
‘Fornalutx,’ the poem from which this volume takes its title, sets out the clash of joyful expectation and frustrated desire that lies at the heart of this late retrospective collection of the poems of Irving Layton …The poem’s bitter descent, with its rich epic overtones, may be taken as an emblem of Irving Layton’s poetic vision and nature. In it is contained his instinc-tual readiness for joy and its persistent confounding by the sour earth on which he finds himself. Here is his willingness to damn; here too are his favoured symbols, twisted by a vile human nature into sources of suffering and confusion. Here is that striking casualness of tone that disguises the meticulous rhythmic expression of his poems. And here, too, is the self-irony that has generated his most successful and compelling poetry. from the Introduction