Drawing from his literary fathers Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams, Bollingen Prize-winning poet David Ignatow eschews ornamentation in favor of embracing the fierce, uncompromising truths of the human spirit in his eighteenth collection.

Review 6 The Affection Between Us By The Nest Of The Mother Bird Confusion Is What I Know Best Despite The Plainness Of The Day Each Of Us Fall Here I Am In A Room I Dream I Hurl A Spear I Like How Your Belly I'm A Machine Impermanence In Another Dream It Is Peculiar That You Should Love Me It's Not You I Miss It's So Reassuring To Show Myself To You Keep Time Away Knowledge The Life The Love We Had Midnight: 2 My Love For You Is A Dark Hall Neither One Now Opening Paths Orgasm The Puzzle Reality Is The Other Person The Sea Is My Place See Shapely Summer We Are Like Two Freight Cars What Would Life Be Without You? Who Am I To Be Loved Without Sexual Attraction, There Is The World The Wound Wrong Your Body Is Not Mine Your Face Before Me -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

I have a Name is a vital engagement with life and an unflinching stare at death, concluding that love transcendent is a reality, Winner of the William Carlos Williams Award (1997) The wondrous subtlety of David Ignatow's art is brought to bear on the timeless themes of love and death. Intimate remembrances evince a rich life: Hebrew lessons, war, first love, friendships with Stanley Kunitz and others, his wife's death. One poem comments on another, often with wit and irony; no statement is ever final. In this way, Ignatow shows that we exist most fully in the fluidity of our perceptions and in our inability to attain a single state of mind or definition of things. I Have A Name is a vital engagement with life and an unflinching stare at death, concluding that love transcendent is a reality, embracing all, the living and the dead.

Poetic explorations of a celebrated poet's inner world. With that three-line epigraph, David Ignatow declares the thrust and purpose of his compelling new book. Unlike his previous work, which was written largely in reaction to the world about him—the urban landscape with its clamor and violence and business pressures—these new poems turn inward. They explore and confirm the individual in his never ending search for awareness and realization: a process in which conflict, love, sorrow, and insight in the end come together into a precarious balance that is its own form of peace.

The character of a person, and the worth of a poet, may be judged by how he or she comes to terms with death. David Ignatow, not in his late 70s, faces the prospect of death squarely and speaks with quiet authority of his puzzlement, anger, grief, and ultimate acceptance. In 66 short poems, that together form one monumental work, Ignatow describes what it is to grow old--the isolation, loss of loved ones, idle hours, long walks --and ponders the elemental conundrum of ceasing to exist: "Why was I born if I have to die,/ buzzed the fly, and buzzed and buzzed." He demonstrates his greatness as a poet when he moves beyond somberness to turn the awe of death into a heightened awareness of life and a force that clarifies how we should spend our brief time on this earth. Divided into three sections, Ignatow's conversational meditations are at first ironic and humorous as he addresses "you fool of a cosmos." He then becomes more personal, considering what his dead parents would think of him as a white-haired old man, recalling the "silent company" of the last years with his aging wife, realizing that "it is death to be alone." Ultimately, he finds solace in the natural world--the sound of rain, smell of grass, warmth of sunshine. Without becoming sentimental or mystical, he sees that death is much the glory and handiwork of god (if there be one) as are the mountains and the flowers, which will also die. The poet turns from self-absorption, sadness and regret to see death's power as a reflection of life's wonder: "I look/ out upon the dark, knowing/ death as one form/ of transcendence, but/ so is life."

Unread. Pages clean and bright. Binding tight and strong. Mild shelfwear to cover, including one shallow scratch.