In the following essay, Wiens comments on the importance of keeping Layton's critical statements framed by the literary, political, and social context in which they were made. Wiens highlights the people and movements surrounding Layton's comments, particularly those associated with the controversies between the literary magazines Preview and First Statement.

In the following essay, Wiens traces Layton's relationship with Canadian writer Desmond Pacey in their unpublished correspondence spanning nearly two decades. Wiens focuses on Pacey's criticism of and influence on Layton's poetics from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s.

In the following essay, Solecki compares the works of D. H. Lawrence to the works of Layton and poet Al Purdy in the context of Canadian literature.

In the following essay, O'Rourke compares Layton's public image with a more complete portrait, commenting on Layton's role as a poet and teacher and providing extended excerpts from a number of Layton's March 1978 class lectures. In the class transcriptions, Layton gives autobiographical information, descriptions of some of his work, and responds to various questions from students.

In the following essay, Layton—the son of Irving Layton—discusses his relationship with his father and the Layton family's relationship with poet Leonard Cohen.

In the following essay, Trehearne outlines the professional significance of “Whatever Else Poetry Is Freedom” in Layton's career, highlighting the strategies and motives underlying his public pursuit of fame.

In the following interview, conducted on December 10, 1977, Layton discusses social and religious history and ideas; the state of poetry in Canada; and his public image.

In the following essay, Lewis examines the attitudes toward women in the themes, images, and literary strategies of Layton's love poetry, comparing the sexist, misogynistic, and anti-feminist qualities of his poems with similar opinions gleaned from his personal life.

In the following essay, Bernstein analyzes similarities between the rhetoric of contemporary Israeli society and the themes of Fortunate Exile, highlighting the pessimistic relationship between post-1967 Jewish poetry and Judaic history.

In the following essay, Smith argues that a culturally derived “poetic instinct” bridges the work of Layton and fellow Canadian poet Archibald Lampman.

In the following review, Trehearne assesses the literary and biographical significance of Irving Layton and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, 1953-1978, in light of American poet Creeley's influence on Layton's artistic development.

[After reading his Collected Poems I find that] Irving Layton is a poet whom one reads at his best with delight, and at his worst with a puzzled wonder that so good a poet could write and—even more astonishing—could publish such wretched verse…. (p. 5) For all his flamboyance of manner, Layton is capable of some extraordinary lapses into mere triteness and triviality…. He can also perpetuate, with a coy archness that seems out of character, some of the weakest jokes that can ever...

In the following review, Smith contrasts Elspeth Cameron's biography of Layton with Waiting for the Messiah, Layton's memoir, highlighting the different accounts of the interplay between the man and his poetry.

In the following review, Irmscher comments on two different biographies of William Carlos Williams before highlighting the contents of Irving Layton and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, a volume Irmscher believes holds more value for biographers than literary theorists.

In the following review, Harding characterizes Layton's political viewpoints in Taking Sides as troublesome and bewildering, attributing the former to naiveté and the latter to poor editing.

In 1954 Irving Layton published two volumes of verse that stood out as remarkable in a year that was distinguished by several books of more than usual merit…. One of Mr. Layton's books, The Long Pea-shooter, was mainly satirical; the other In the Midst of my Fever, was entirely serious, though not at all solemn. It contained a number of poems that are not only far above anything he has done before but are as fine as any written by a poet of Mr. Layton's generation in America. [In 1955 M...

In the following excerpt, Owens comments on the structure, imagery, language, and themes of Final Reckoning.

In the following essay, Flynn recounts Layton's presence at a dinner party they both attended.

In the following review, Ravvin questions why Dance with Desire, a collection with almost the same contents as a volume released earlier, was published as a separate work. Ravvin also challenges the classification of Layton's poems as love poetry, believing the hostile elements in the poetry to push even the widest boundaries of the genre.

I must confess that for the past three or four years I've been unable to read anything by Irving Layton, at any rate not without a certain feeling of sour taste and acid indigestion. Whether this comes of prejudice as Layton himself tells me, or of something in the poetry, I cannot be sure. For years I was his champion against the deaf and myopic critics in Canada, insisting that he was a vigorous realistic poet who deserved recognition. Today everyone is ready to admit that Layton is much better tha...

Mr. Irving Layton, to fit him quickly into the curriculum, should be brackted with, say, Charles Olson and Robert Creeley…. Canada provides him with a situation, not a tradition. He belongs to the anti-academic wing … of the American poetic generation, a little younger than Auden and Spender, whose right and center fill the better-capitalized quarterlies with cat's-cradle Meditations and grey flannel Suites: the generation that succeeded and should have inherited the achievements of Pou...

[Irving Layton's] three principal gifts are a matchless ease and spontaneity of phrasing, an acute ear for line and stanza cadences, and the power to declare himself with indomitable authority on many topics. The authority derives from the most superb self-confidence in Canadian literature and from total faith in a handful of pseudo-ideas adapted from Nietzsche and Lawrence. Most of these views belong to the stock-in-trade of the anti-bourgeois writers from Sherwood Anderson to Alan Ginsberg. From th...

In the following review, Solecki recommends Wild Gooseberries for its insights on twentieth-century Canadian letters and culture as well as its glimpses into Layton's psyche.