Karl Shapiro, who won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1945, is an American poetic treasure and an acknowledged master of lyrical poetry whose subjects have ranged from commonplace objects and occurrences to biting political commentary to open celebrations of the contradictions in humanity's moral nature. As his subjects have evolved, so has his style, developing and modulating into various forms, but always with an essential lyricism. To read Shapiro's work as it unfolds in The Wild Card will be to grasp the depth and breadth of a great poet's career and the many sides of his nature.

The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late

Literature & Fiction

KUNITZ, Stanley

IGNATOW, David

SHAPIRO, Karl

Poetry

University of Illinois Press

Tread the Dark: New Poems

Tread the dark: New poems

Little,Brown

Little Brown & Co (Pap)

Facing the tree: New poems

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

Facing the Tree: New Poems

Whisper to the Earth

Atlantic-Little, Brown

Meditations on survival, failure, and self-deception use surreal images to show the absurdity of the real world

Whisper to the Earth: New Poems

Little,Brown & Co

Interviews commenting on Ignatow's life and poetry accompany essays, reviews, lectures, and critical studies of William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, James Wright, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg

Open Between Us (Poets on Poetry)

Mills, Ralph J.

History & Criticism

Univ of Michigan Pr

The Notebooks of David Ignatow

The notebooks of David Ignatow

Essays & Correspondence

SWALLOW PRESS+

"The idea of communication or community pervades everything I've written." So concluded the poet David Ignatow - from his perspective as a septuagenarian - in a 1985 letter to his literary executor, Roy Harvey Pearce. For this poet, staying in touch with his colleagues and editors through written correspondence amounted to an affirmation of his own existence. Spanning nearly four-and-a-half decades of communication, a collection of David Ignatow's letters has now been compiled and edited by poet and critic Gary Pacernick, one of Ignatow's recent correspondents. Pacernick's sensitively selected compilation, Talking Together, traces the poet's career from his youthful stance as a workingman-poet, through his gradual midlife recognition by his fellow artists as a voice of distinction, and on through his establishment as an important contemporary poet. Written for the most part at post-breakfast sittings and addressed with remarkable regularity to such illustrious recipients as William Carlos Williams and Ralph J. Mills, Jr., the letters demonstrate, for Ignatow, an otherwise unseen range of human emotion, adding an important new dimension to his published work. With their straightforward portraits of the commonplace, the poems of David Ignatow can be deceptively simple. If his harshest critics have failed to discern the underlying complexity of his work, then Pacernick's compilation does much to reveal the poet's intricate but controlled thought processes, unraveling through a series of letters that are admirable in their own right for their unimpeded flow and cadence. By attempting to create a community of writers with whom he shares the details and nuances of his existence, Ignatow has survived in an indifferent, if not hostile, environment. The letters show the private man, the writer, in communication with other writers, fighting against loneliness, frustration, jealousy, and rage, through the form of sharing and sustenance that these letters become. In addition, the letters provide an intimate portrait of the poet's career from his first attempts at recognition to later success. The reader shares Ignatow's thoughts, feelings, and insights about his own poetry and the poetry and criticism of his contemporaries, as well as the work of such major American writers as Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Stevens, Williams, Eliot, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. He also has fascinating things to say about the art and craft of poetry. Although there is much to learn here about literary culture as well as what some refer to as po-biz - the poetry business - the letters have a deeper level as well that is concerned with the emotional and spiritual life of the artist. While never hiding his doubts, fears, and frustrations, Ignatow is revealed to us as a person with a consuming interest in seeking the truth in life and literature.

Talking Together: Letters of David Ignatow, 1946-1990

Biographies & Memoirs

University Alabama Press

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Books by IGNATOW, David