Presentation Notes on Irving Layton

I have many contradictory feelings about women…it’s these contradictory,

ambivalent feelings that have made me so unsuitable a partner in marriage.

-letter to Dorothy Rath, dec 19, 1967

Thesis: In our research we’ve had very contradictory feelings about Irving Layton,
in some sense he appeared to have great depth and capacity to love and in others
seemed to be totally self centered and oblivious to other people’s feelings and
attuned to only his own bodily needs and wants. And so we haven’t come to any
tidy conclusion about him, and I can venture a guess he wouldn’t have liked it if we
had, and so we will present to you what we have gathered about him and his
relationship with some of the major female figures in his life, barring his mother, and
see how you guys feel.

The following poem, titled Woman, aptly describes this ambivalent feeling Layton
has towards women:

Woman
O not remembering
vain and not to trust her derision of me,
unstable as wind, I plunge like a corkscrew
as the wind ignorant; into her softness
shallow , her laugh her small wicked body
jarring my mended teeth and there, beyond reproach,
i spit out I roar like a sick lion
the loose silver between her breasts.
from my aching mouth

with candid gaze

she meets my jealous
look, and is false.
Yet I am lost, lost.
Beauty and pleasure,
fatal gifts,
she brings in her thighs,
in her small amorous body.
Faye Lynch

She was Layton’s first wife. They met in 1936 and married in 1938 when Layton
was 23. When Layton graduated from Macdonald College in 1939, he moved
with Faye to Halifax where he worked odd jobs, including a stint as a Fuller
Brush man. He however soon returned to Montreal after realizing he pitied Faye
rather than loved her and it’s obvious she wasn’t the type of woman he needed
since there was no significant poetry written during this time at all.

Betty Sutherland

Betty Sutherland was Layton’s second wife and he met her while on leave as a
Brigade Commander in Petawawa. She was an accomplished painter (and later
poet). Their union would produce Layton's first two children: Maxwell Rubin
(1946) and Naomi Parker (1950). Their union also produced a lot of poetry for
Layton and he famously wrote the poem Berry Picking about her. Though
Layton eventually left Betty for Aviva, their relationship remained friendly and
Betty regularly corresponded with Layton until her death. Without a doubt it
was probably a very forgiving or open hearted quality in her which allowed the
relationship between her and Layton to not completely sour and Layton seems
to have noticed quality in her early on since a glimpse of it comes though in the
poem Berry Picking.

Berry Picking

Silently my wife walks on the still wet furze

Now darkgreen the leaves are full of metaphors
Now lit up is each tiny lamp of blueberry.
The white nails of rain have dropped and the sun is free.

And whether she bends or straightens to each bush

To find the children's laughter among the leaves
Her quiet hands seem to make the quiet summer hush--
Berries or children, patient she is with these.

I only vex and perplex her; madness, rage

Are endearing perhaps put down upon the page;
Even silence daylong and sullen can then
Enamor as restraint or classic discipline.

So I envy the berries she puts in her mouth,

The red and succulent juice that stains her lips;
I shall never taste that good to her, nor will they
Displease her with a thousand barbarous jests.

How they lie easily for her hand to take,

Part of the unoffending world that is hers;
Here beyond complexity she stands and stares
And leans her marvelous head as if for answers.

No more the easy soul my childish craft deceives

Nor the simpler one for whom yes is always yes;
No, now her voice comes to me from a far way off
Though her lips are redder than the raspberries.

Aviva Cantor (Layton)

She’s originally from Australia and she was never actually married to Layton
and apparently Leonard Cohen slipped a ring on her finger on behalf of Layton
one day. She changed her name from Cantor to Layton after the birth of their
son and so many people assumed they had married. Friends introduced the two
of them in 1956 and although Betty and Layton were still married, Layton
moved in with Aviva. Aviva and Layton had a son David in 1964 and later David
would go on to recount the turbulent life they had together in his
autobiography, Motion Sickness. Aviva couldn’t handle the ups and downs of
their relationship anymore and after spend over 20 years together she left
Layton for the novelist Leon Whiteson. His love for her is evident in poem he
wrote for her titled Aviva.

aviva

dear wife, it is not your beauty

though beautiful you are
nor is it your warm grace and intelligence
that sweep me to your feet to be kept a captive there
by your smiles, your brightening glance

Granted, you are lovely beyond compare:

still, unprincipled poet that i am
it is for your name alone I adore
and follow you around on prayerful knees
though, entrancing one, you should leave me
at the wide mouth of Hades

fiery Catullus had his Lesbia

and the gentle Tibullus, his Delia
Propertius mooned for Cynthia
while the great Ovid, sensual and wise,
swooned in faultless verse
for his incomparable Corinna

I , swiftly scaling
my heraldic ladder in an ethnic slum
I , Irving Layton, with these latin elegists
shall be numbered in times to come
havig doxologized you, lovely aviva,
whose vernal name is loveliest of all