SOURCE: Wiens, Erwin. “The Horses of Realism: The Layton-Pacey Correspondence.” Studies in Canadian Literature 10, nos. 1-2 (1985): 183-207.

In the following essay, Wiens traces Layton's relationship with Canadian writer Desmond Pacey in their unpublished correspondence spanning nearly two decades.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.

I

On November 3, 1954, Desmond Pacey addressed a letter to Contact Press, inviting the poets Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster and Irving Layton to submit their recent work for a review article on Canadian literature. Early in 1955 Pacey and Layton met in Montreal, and so began a long friendship and an invaluable correspondence, documenting the development of Canadian poetry and criticism after World War II, and the development of a major critic and a pre-eminent poet. The correspondence is also rich in personal drama, recording the triumphs and setbacks in the careers of...