Irving Layton is Canada's most prolific and pugnacious poet and has sustained a powerful if not to say domineering position in Canadian letters for over forty-five years. In the nearly fifty books he has published since 1945, Layton has been a writer of unflagging energy and undiminished anger who combines the rage of Jeremiah with the vitality of Nietzsche. Layton embodies his own idea of the poet as one who should "disturb and discomfort" society as well as the universe. This attitude, however, has frequently led to controversy. While some praise Layton's rambunctious style, others denigrate his pompous proclamations of self worth. Critics agree only that Irving Layton is a paradox: "each of his books both contradicts and affirms all that he has done before," Eli Mandel has written (Globe and Mail , 22 March 1969). Offset by an ironic point of view and often satiric tone, Layton's romantic sense of self...