Shadowing the Ground (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Softcover

Ignatow, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819511978 ISBN 13: 9780819511973

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 1991

Synopsis

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."

About this title

About the Authors

DAVID IGNATOW teaches writing at Columbia University and has published thirteen volumes of poetry and three prose collections. Ignatow received both the Shelley Memorial Award (1966) and the Frost Medal (1992). His most recent books are New and Collected Poems, 1970-1985 (1986) and The One in the Many: A Poet's Memoirs (1988).

DAVID IGNATOW teaches writing at Columbia University and has published thirteen volumes of poetry and three prose collections. Ignatow received both the Shelley Memorial Award (1966) and the Frost Medal (1992). His most recent books are New and Collected Poems, 1970-1985 (1986) and The One in the Many: A Poet's Memoirs (1988).

Reviews

In a voice that is by turns resigned, bitter, anguished and accepting, Ignatow ( Rescue the Dead ) confronts the hugeness of his inevitable death, using poetry as a way to wrestle with the riddle of mortality. In old age, the poet feels "alone, / for with love and command gone we are directed / toward ourselves, and alone now we are lonely with everyone." A form of death itself, this aloneness is relieved, strangely enough, by "the thought of dying." For the poet, now in his late 70s, beauty is both an ameliorating force--providing him with the means for aesthetic and spiritual transcendence--and a painful reminder of "the life that escapes me." Ignatow's quiet, contemplative tone lulls the reader with its sad sagacity. His words, however tremulous with feeling they may be, have been chosen with economy and care, expressing with the utmost bravery and honesty a range of emotions from exhilaration to despair. The poet can ultimately offer no definitive answers to his puzzled questions about the meaning of existence, living instead with his "contradictions / intact," looking "out upon the dark, knowing / death as one form of transcendence, but / so is life."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mortality has always been an important theme in Ignatow's poetry. This collection is devoted exclusively to meditations on his own projected death and the deaths of his wife and his parents. The anticipated grimness is relieved by the spareness of Ignatow's lines and his unsparing view of the flesh's decay: "Old men spend their days farting/ in private to entertain themselves/ in the absence of friends/ long since gone." Paradoxically, what may become depressing here is a willful naivete that generates an aggregation of platitudes: "We can't write ourselves into eternal life." Still, Ignatow has said in his recent memoirs ( The One in the Many , LJ 11/1/88) that "death is my theme, but life is my subject." This attitude recommends all his recent writings to the undernourished shelf of books on facing death, quite apart from his high rank among elder American poets.
- Rob Schmieder, Boston
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819511978
• ISBN 13: 9780819511973
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80