Ignatow, David (Vol. 14) - Hayden Carruth
HAYDEN CARRUTH
The first poem in David Ignatow's ["Tread the Dark"] is "Brightness as a Poignant Light." We know its importance to him because he has placed it first and has taken his book's title from it. But beyond that it is important to the book itself, a statement of the major theme, and will become important, I think, to all who read it….
Notice that Mr. Ignatow has made his poem from the most conventional ideas in our culture: intellectual light, the darkness of reality, silence, the passing of generations. Notice as well the spareness of language, the absence of trickiness. In an age of artifice, such as we appear to be inhabiting, many may fail to respond to this conventionality and simplicity, which will be their loss, for another definition of poetry is a new perceiving of the roots of convention, a re-seeing. This is Mr. Ignatow's gift, to bring the inevitable conventionality of human response to new expression. (p. 14)
Each word of the...
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