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    A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig"
    A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig"
    A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig"
    Ebook34 pages25 minutes

    A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 19, 2016
    ISBN9781535817325
    A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig"

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      A Study Guide for Irving Layton's "A Tall Man Executes a Jig" - Gale

      1

      A Tall Man Executes a Jig

      Irving Layton

      1963

      Introduction

      A Tall Man Executes a Jig is one of Layton’s most anthologized poems, as well as one of his most ambitious and difficult. Layton himself would not argue this. In a 1963 review of Balls for a One-Armed Juggler by critic A. W. Purdy, reprinted in 1978 in Irving Layton: The Poet and His Critics, Purdy likens A Tall Man Executes a Jig to a parable written by God for his worshippers. He also recounts what Layton said to him about it: ‘Al, in ten years you’ll be able to understand this poem. In twenty you might be able to write one as good.’

      While humility may not be one of this poet’s virtues, he does make a valid point regarding the complexity and the quality of A Tall Man Executes a Jig. Like a parable, it does tell a story to illustrate a moral lesson, but that lesson is not as evident or orthodox as those found in common parables. Layton incorporates religious imagery and allusions—both Christian and Hebrew—as well as naturalist, or pagan, principles, taking his persona through encounters with each one only to be disappointed every time. This is a poem about man and his search for the knowledge of existence, the true wisdom of the earth. It is also about his power to create, to destroy, and to choose death as a means to achieve transformation. Animals typically figure into a Layton poem, and in this one gnats and a snake are central characters. After the tall man tries to find solace first in nature, then in Christianity, and then in Judaism, in the end he decides to lie down beside a dead snake and die too. The reptile, it seems, is the only one who has been "The manifest of that joyful

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