COLLECTED POEMS. Signed by Layton.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 1965.
1st Edition. by author. Octavo. Cream-coloured pictorial boards featuring a black-and-white photographic portrait of Irving Layton, with gilt stamping to the spine and upper board. In the publisher’s original unclipped dust jacket, which reproduces the same portrait in black and white.
The photograph was taken by noted Canadian portrait photographer John Reeves, renowned for his images of artists and intellectuals, including Leonard Cohen and Northrop Frye.
Both book and jacket are near fine, showing only the faintest shelfwear.
Signed boldly in black ink by Irving Layton on the front free endpaper, in his iconic, sweeping hand.
This rare first collected edition of Layton’s work consolidates nearly two decades of poetry and includes selections from Now is the Place, The Cold Green Element, The Improved Binoculars, and A Red Carpet for the Sun — the latter having won the Governor General’s Award in 1959.
An essential volume in the Canadian literary canon, Collected Poems represents the moment Layton transitioned from controversial poet to national figure. His fiercely individualist voice — by turns erotic, political, and philosophical — positioned him as the "enfant terrible" of postwar Canadian letters.
Leonard Cohen, who considered Layton a mentor and "a kind of literary father," credited him with helping shape his own poetic voice. Their close friendship and mutual influence are well documented, notably in Leonard Cohen: A Life in Art and Irving Layton: God's Recording Angel.
Item #34113 Price: US$1,200.00