Love Poems, is the definitive collection of Irving Layton's love poetry. Few poets have written with such sensual intensity, vitality and passion in celebration of women. Here you will discover poems of extraordinary variety ; joy, jealousy, sexuality, exultation, lyricism, sarcasm and disappointment.

Irving Layton (Israel Lazarovitch) was born March 12, 1912 in Tirgu Neamt, Romania. Layton came to Montreal with his family before he was one. He attained a BSc in agriculture at Macdonald College in 1939. Following a stint in the Canadian Army, he did graduate work in political science at McGill. A poet, short-story writer, and essayist, Layton is perhaps the most well-known of the Montreal poets, a group of young poets who engaged in a battle against romanticism in poetry in the 1940's. Layton has published many poetry collections, including A Red Carpet for the Sun (1959) which won the Governor General's Award. Layton was poet-in-residence at various Canadian universities and a professor of English at York University 1969-78. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1981.

Irving Layton died in 2006.

Irving Layton's profile page

"I'm knocked out by the richness, the resonance, the generosity, the hard intelligence, the clarity, the passion, and above all else, the great, great aching tenderness, which remains very much a part of who he is and he means to me."
— Leonard Cohen

"Irving Layton takes his place with ease among the best poets writing in English today anywhere."
— George Woodcock, former editor of Canadian Literature

"When I first clapped my eyes on the poems of Irving Layton…I let out a yell of joy…"
— William Carlos Williams