Love, death and life
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It
Poet writes of 'the usual things'
By RUTH ROHRER
The medium-built man with the thinning salt-and-pepper hair stood up, loosened his tie and began reading his poetry.
The room was still and the audience listened intently—en-grossed in the lines that the poet with the deeply expressive voice was reading.
KU's own poet-in-residence, David Ignatow, read of love, of dying, and of starving people in the cities at the poetry hour yesterday sponsored jointly by Student Union Activities and the English department.
IGNATOW, a lecturer in English, is a native and long-time resident of New York City, the locale that figures most prominently in his poetry.
He has four published volumes: "Poems" (1948), "The Gentle Weightlifter" (1955), "Say Pardon" (1961), and "Figures of the Human." Another book of poetry, "Rescue the Dead," will be published next year.
Ignatow says he likes to write about the usual things: "Love, death and the expense of living."
Roy Gridley, assistant professor of English, said, "David's poetry frequently reflects the savagery and horror of the cityscape which he streaks with a hand of guarded compassion and humor. His poetry reveals certain preoccupations but is, I think, refreshingly free of theory."
AS ONE OF Ignatow's poems says, "No theory will stand up to a chicken's guts being cleaned out. . ."
Often his figures live in a world in which as another of his poems states.
Nobody listens to anybody. In which we do as we please Until we are stopped by others.
Gridley said, "But, I think, David's poetry makes us stop and listen."
I wish I understood the beauty of leaves, falling.
All things being equal,
To whom are we beautiful as we go?
IGNATOW EXPLAINED this by saying, "Man is beautiful in any form of dying—being corrupted, becoming too human, and then he falls.
"It is hard for me to sit down and explain what a poem means," he says. "When you create a thing it comes to you in a flash of illumination.
"However," he says, "you must be sure your thoughts are actually realized and that it satisfied you as an imaginative work, so you use the various devices of writing—imagery, forming the syntax, and making certain of the tone."
Ignatow, who never went to college after graduating from high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., has made his living as a writer since he was 19.
SINCE THAT TIME, he has worked in public relations for the government; edited one of the leading poetry magazines, The Beloit Poetry Journal; and taught at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research in New York City, and at the University of Kentucky.
He has been a frequent contributor to such magazines as: Poetry, The Nation, Carleton, Miscellany, The Sixties, and Kavak.
In the spring of 1964 he received a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in recognition of his life time creative work.
THE 53-YEAR-OLD poet says,
"The life of a poet is not isolated
from the life of a husband, a
father, or any typical person."
Ignatow teaches fiction writing and 20th century American poetry at KU. Of his students he says, "Everyone has something to say, but whether or not they can persist in doing so is important."
He advised aspiring writers to "keep writing and look for a magazine or book editor who will appreciate your work."
IGNATOW SAID he felt he would be a poet whether he had lived in New York or Arkansas. "When I was 20, I realized that I had to make poetry my sole concern." he said.
Therefore, environment does not play a great part in what a
DAVID IGNATOW
poet writes, he said. "What you know from within, you use to measure people by; and what you know from other people, you use to measure yourself."
Daily Kansan 7
Thursday, December 8,1966
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