SOURCE: Solecki, Sam. “D. H. Lawrence, Irving Layton, and Al Purdy: In the Canadian Grain.” Essays on Canadian Writing, no. 49 (summer 1993) 93-110.

In the following essay, Solecki compares the works of D. H. Lawrence to the works of Layton and poet Al Purdy in the context of Canadian literature.

We own the country we grow up in, or we are aliens and invaders.

—Ondaatje 81

La vrai terre natale est celle où on a eu sa première émotion forte.

—Remy de Gourmont

This essay has two concerns whose connection will become apparent only gradually: D. H. Lawrence’s influence on Irving Layton and Al Purdy, and the different conceptions or visions of a national literature and identity—what Dennis Lee calls an “imaginative patrimony” (390)—implicit in the bodies of work of the two Canadians. Although I will refer throughout to Lawrence’s “influence,” the word I really want...