Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

by David Ignatow

Rare poetry concerning human mortality and alienation.

For over half a century, David Ignatow has crafted spare, plain, haunting poetry pf working life, urban images, and dark humor. The poetic heir of Whitman and William Carlos Williams, Ignatow is characteristically concerned with human mortality and human alienation in the the world as it is, defined by suffering and despair, yet at crucial times redeemed by cosmic vision and shared lives. His development as a poet is chronicled in Against the Evidence, title of the poem in part quoted above and meant by Ignatow as the metaphor for the whole body of his work.

Where his previous collections have been organized thematically, Ignatow here arranges his poems "according to the decade in which they were written…returning each to its chronological order." Against the Evidence charts the evolution of his themes from the earliest origin in the Thirties to their present extraordinary manifestation in a variety of poetic forms and modes.

Genres: Poetry

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

David Ignatow was an American poet. He was born in Brooklyn on February 7, 1914, and spent most of his life in the New York City area. He died on November 17, 1997, at his home in East Hampton, New York. His papers are held at University of California, San Diego.

Early in his career he worked in a butcher shop. He also helped out in a bindery in Brooklyn, New York, which he later owned and managed. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, he sought employment with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a journalist. His father helped him with the funding to produce his first book, Poems, in 1948. Although the volume was well received, he had to continue working various jobs and find time in between to pursue writing. These jobs included work as a messenger, hospital admitting clerk, vegetable market night clerk, and paper salesman. After committing wholly to poetry, Ignatow worked as an editor of American Poetry Review, Analytic, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Chelsea Magazine, and as poetry editor of The Nation.

He taught at the New School for Social Research, the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, Vassar College, York College, City University of New York, New York University, and Columbia University. He was president of the Poetry Society of America from 1980 to 1984 and poet-in-residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in 1987.

Ignatow's many honors include a Bollingen Prize, two Guggenheim fellowships, the John Steinbeck Award, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters award "for a lifetime of creative effort." He received the Shelley Memorial Award (1966), the Frost Medal (1992), and the William Carlos Williams Award (1997) of the Poetry Society of America.

David Ignatow is remembered as a poet who wrote popular verse about the common man and the issues encountered in daily life. In all, he wrote or edited more than twenty-five books. Direct statement and clarity were two of Ignatow's primary objectives in crafting a poem. Fidelity to the details and issues of daily life in Ignatow's poetry won him a reputation for being "the most autobiographical of writers." Ignatow once told Contemporary Authors: "My avocation is to stay alive; my vocation is to write about it; my motivation embraces both intentions, and my viewpoint is gained from a study and activity in both ambitions.

Reviews

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems strange to call a poet who swept up literary awards virtually in his sleep an underrated writer, but he seems to have largely vanished from contemporary consciousness. That's a shame, because many readers would probably find his poems not only enjoyable but serviceable. There's a homely sort of beauty to his short poems, which are often neurotic, but smart and sometimes even sacramental. He sometimes reminds me of Creeley, sometimes Bronk, but he's his own creature and he has a practical way about him even when he's indulging in metaphysical larks.

EACH STONE

Each stone its shape
each shape its weight
each weight its value
in my garden as I dig them up
for Spring planting,
and I say, lifting one at a time,
there is a joy here
in being able to handle
so many meaningful
differences.


IF WE COULD BE BROUGHT

If we could be brought to the surface
like a gleaming fish and served for supper,
if we could eat and swallow our own life
to make a good meal, if we could go fishing
for ourselves and feed on the gleaming
swimmer below the surface of our skin--
the fish that is our slippery life
and death.



NO THEORY

No theory will stand up to a chicken's guts
being cleaned out, a hand rammed up
to pull out the wriggling entrails,
the green bile and the bloody liver;
no theory that does not grow sick
at the odor escaping.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think David Ignatow’s best two books were from the 1970s: Facing the Tree and Tread the Dark. I liked this collection because I could revisit those two books. I imagined him then, as I do now, typing his poems on an old Underwood in his Brooklyn flat with the window open. He always viewed mortality as the elephant in the room, but did so with sardonic humor. He’s not a poet of rhyme, meter, or even disciplined craft. Rather, just a plain-spoken observer of the journey.

[Lorri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I watched David Ignatow grow, mature, mentally and emotionally within the pages of this beautiful book of poetry. This is my second reading of it, and for me, it is timely, due to the circumstances regarding the COVID-19, that has taken hold in America, and worldwide.

I enjoyed reading, within the last portion of the book, how Ignatow is comfortable within himself, and is not afraid to live alone. He understood that 'lonely' and 'alone' are not necessarily the same thing.

Autonomy is extremely important, and the ability to live alone without feeling lonely or disengaged, is a positive trait.

I felt David Ignatow depicted that ability, and enjoyed this book of poetry.

[Jenni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Ignatow, but the problem is over the course of his selected, he starts to seem too negative and bitter. Better to read him one collection at a time.