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Home » David Ignatow

David Ignatow

Earth hard to my heels
bear me up like a child
standing on its mother's belly.
I am a surprised guest to the air.

David Ignatow (7 February 1914 - 17 November 1997). Born in Brooklyn on February 7, 1914, and spent most of his life in the New York City area.

Career

He has published sixteen volumes of poetry and three prose collections. Included in these are Poems, The Gentle Weightlifter, Say Pardon, Figures of the Human, Earth Hard: Selected Poems, Rescue the Dead, Poems: 1934-1969, Facing the Tree, Selected Poems-1975, Tread the Dark, Whisper to the Earth, Leaving the Door Open, Shadowing the Ground, Despite the Plainness of the Day: Love Poems-1991, Against the Evidence, and I Have a Name. He has taught at Columbia, the New School for Social Research, the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, York College of the City University of New York, New York University, and Vassar College. At various times he has worked as an editor for the American Poetry Review and Beloit Poetry Journal.

Achievement

The National Institute of Arts and Letters has presented to Mr. Ignatow an award "for a lifetime of creative effort." His work has been recognized also with the Bollingen Prize, two Guggenheim fellowhips, the Wallace Stevens fellowship from Yale University, the Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, the Poetry Society of America's Shelly Memorial Award, and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is president emeritus of the Poetry Society of America and a member of the executive board of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. His current home is in East Hampton, Long Island.

For My Daughter in Reply to a Question

We're not going to die.
we'll find a way.
We'll breathe deeply
and eat carefully.
We'll think always on life.
There'll be no fading for you or for me.
We'll be the first
and we'll not laugh at ourselves ever
and your children will be my grandchildren.
Nothing will have changed
except by addition.
There'll never be another as you
and never another as I.
No one ever will confuse you
nor confuse me with another.
We will not be forgotten and passed over
and buried under the births and deaths to come.

What Robert Bly had to say about David Ignatow's work:

In form, David Ignatow is a master of the natural or non- academic style pioneered by Whitman and William Carlos Williams. In content he is a master also, this time of the harsh perception, the self-judgment reluctantly made. He tells truths that are so bitter they seem sweet. I find him a great poet and a friend of the soul.

And Rest

David Ignatow

Sky

David Ignatow

The Interview II

David Ignatow

I Wish a God Were Possible

David Ignatow

The Future

David Ignatow

The Metamorphosis

David Ignatow

With the Sun’s Fire

David Ignatow

For Yaedi

David Ignatow

Prose Poem in Six Parts

David Ignatow

Witness

David Ignatow

We

David Ignatow

To Nowhere

David Ignatow

A Semblance

David Ignatow

The Self

David Ignatow

On the Death of Winston Churchill

David Ignatow

The Mountain Is Stripped

David Ignatow

Live It Through

David Ignatow

Like Smoke

David Ignatow

If My Hand

David Ignatow

I Felt

David Ignatow

The Hope

David Ignatow

Here I Am

David Ignatow

A Cloud Creates

David Ignatow

The Building

David Ignatow

Between Us

David Ignatow

Beautiful and Kind

David Ignatow

As I Stumble

David Ignatow

And Step

David Ignatow

All Quiet

David Ignatow

Information

David Ignatow

On Freedom

David Ignatow

Two Friends

David Ignatow

Without Sexual Attraction

David Ignatow

For My Daughter

David Ignatow

The Bagel

David Ignatow

Here In Bed

David Ignatow

Listening

David Ignatow

That’s The Sum Of It

David Ignatow

Permanence

David Ignatow

Midnight

David Ignatow

I Close My Eyes

David Ignatow

Against The Evidence

David Ignatow

Moving Picture

David Ignatow

My Skeleton, My Rival

David Ignatow

An Ecology

David Ignatow

If We Could Be Brought

David Ignatow

Play Again

David Ignatow

The Journey

David Ignatow

Melpomene In Manhattan

David Ignatow

Self-employed: For Harvey Shapiro

David Ignatow

Two

David Ignatow

An Illusion

David Ignatow

At This Moment

David Ignatow

It Is

David Ignatow

Ritual One

David Ignatow

Walt Whitman In The Civil War Hospitals

David Ignatow

Earth Hard

David Ignatow

Rescue The Dead

David Ignatow

In A Dream

David Ignatow

I Dream

David Ignatow

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