Ignatow, David (Vol. 7) | Ignatow, David 1914–
Ignatow, David 1914–
Ignatow, a poet of urban America—that is, of New York City—is usually compared with William Carlos Williams. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
David Ignatow's poems [in The Gentle Weight Lifter] are quiet, observant, matter-of-fact comments on ordinary urban life—or, more surprisingly, on Oedipus and Odysseus and Bathsheba and such—made by a man who seems individually sensitive and morally imaginative yet also, in a rather favorable sense, the man in the street. William Carlos Williams calls him "a first-rate poet … to whom language is like his skin," but really he's an unratable poet to whom language is like William Carlos Williams' skin. His methods are simple Williams, and his language—not at all rhetorical, close to an easy natural prose, but not prosaic—is that of a loving disciple. His temperament, unfortunately, lacks the heights and depths of Williams'. One respects and...
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