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Endowment Arts & Letters Editorial Staff Learn about the MFA Program
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Speaking to the Extraordinary : An Interview with David Ignatow
By: Rosemary
Szczygiel |
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During his career, David Ignatow (1914 –1997)
published thirteen books of poetry and two books of memoir. He worked as
editor for American Poetry Review, Analytic, Beloit Poetry
Journal, and Chelsea Magazine, and as poetry editor for The
Nation. He was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and the
Wallace Stevens fellowship of The
Notebooks of David Ignatow, edited by Ralph Mills (Chicago: Swallow
Press, 1973) portrays Ignatow's struggle to reconcile his experiences in
terms of artistic insights. As the subject of essays in Meaningful
Differences edited by Virginia R. Tessler (University of Alabama Press,
1994), his profound artistic experience is proven to be an extensive
influence on twentieth-century American poets. His poems deliver commonplace
objects and occurrences into the light of aesthetic contemplation.
Consequently, ideals are brought into the world of everyday living. At his home in RS:
In your notebooks, you say you are a poet because you "have to be"
and that you "write to keep yourself informed of your position in the
world.” What does it feel like to be a poet? What makes you "have to
be"? Ignatow:
I think it was a solution to puzzlement of our living in a world that's both
in the rational and irrational. The world is not rational, and so the only
answer I had for that was to be irrational myself in a way that I could make
sense of the world. In a very irrational way I make sense of the world. RS:
Why through poetry? Ignatow:
Poetry is the imagination. That's what you use to overcome the rational and
the irrational. You can't live a rational life so you live a life of ritual;
you live a life of routine. If you find no answers living in the routine, you
find answers in the imagination, and the imagination creates forms for you,
and answers you can live with. I am not the same person now as I used to be. RS:
What changes have taken place? Ignatow:
I'm much calmer. I feel I am in control of myself. RS:
How do you compare daily existence to the world of the irrational? To that
world of the imagination? Ignatow:
The daily, mundane existence becomes for me a very powerful indication of
what can happen, if you can really stop to think about it. It is an
inspiration because you go beyond that. You take it and you leap. You go
beyond that into a metaphor. You make a metaphor out of your daily life. If
you make a metaphor out of daily life it becomes extraordinary. It becomes
transcendent. That's what I mean by creating an imaginative life for myself.
We can't have any real other life. We have to find a life for ourselves along
the way of a metaphor, in our own transcendent way. RS:
When you find that metaphor in your daily existence, when you leap with your
imagination during the course of daily living, when do you write it down? How
does that turn into a poem? Ignatow:
Well, if I get the metaphor I immediately begin writing it. RS:
Does a poem happen all at once for you? Ignatow:
Sometimes. If it's a short poem, yes, I will write it for as long as it takes, a couple of days...you don't lose track of it. It
grips you, you know? The metaphor controls. It gives you a control over your
existence. You see how it shapes. You see where it's going. You see where
you're going with it, and how it is forming an existence for you. It's giving
you answers for a lot of questions, a lot of confusion. RS:
Were you able to work out some of the dichotomy between human disappointment
and recognition of something more sublime or ideal? Ignatow:
There is a striving for it. I think there is towards the very end. I begin to
emerge from all that chaos and to look back upon it. That's because my work
had become accepted and I realized that I was accepted, yet I was writing a
failure. I was still in difficulty. Accepting this means this is a way to
live. You can live and express your failure and make it a victory. The fact
that you can express failure is a victory itself. RS:
What made you sense it as a failure to begin with? Ignatow:
You don't have that comfort and that security that you had as a child. [As a
child] everything's o.k. You fly with the wind. You watch yourself run and
you say "I am the wind!" Then it's no longer...that is what I mean
by failure. It feels like failure. The fact that it is accepted,
acknowledged, and praised to me means we must take pleasure in failure, and
triumph in writing about failure, writing about it with accuracy, precision,
and with a sense that there's something sublime about it, something
harmonious. RS:
What do you feel was your first major success as a poet? Ignatow:
Worldly success? It began with my first award. I don't know which that was.
I'll have to look that up. There were dozens. Virginia Tessler's recent
compilation of essays on my work has a chronology. She did a thorough job of
this. Let's see... RS:
How did it affect your identity? Ignatow:
It secured me in my contradictory character. Talking of failure and writing
about failure with such passion and joy. I can write about what I think is
failure and people say "Hey, great!" RS:
Tell us about some of the influences on your life and work. You were closely
associated with
William Carlos Williams. There is also a sense that you were
influenced by the work of [Walt] Whitman. Ignatow:
Well, Whitman surprised me, and with my youth, shocked me by the fact that he
took the ordinary life and gave it transcendent need. He gave me hope that
with the irrational life I was living I would find the same process at work
and keep me as sane as he was sane. RS:
About Whitman, you say "he receives back from his fellow man the spirit
he projects on them." To what extent, if at all, can you say poetry
turns from the objective to the subjective? Ignatow:
I think we've answered that. All poetry becomes subjective because we are in
a stage of culture in which the individual must find his own solutions. We
don't have a culture that has a prime and transcendent metaphor by which we
all live. Think of how the Hebrews lived according to God. If you read the
Psalms, that's the main metaphor written in all the Psalms. The great Psalms.
Nothing greater. We don't have that metaphor. We can't take technology. Hart
Crane tried. Hart Crane tried desperately to use technology, the RS:
So we turn to ourselves? Ignatow:
Yes, we turn to ourselves, and those who can do it find metaphors in their
lives which control and explain their lives for them. It's not explained on a
rational basis at all. It's explained on a basis of almost childlike belief,
and a childlike promise. It's the Romantic movement. It's Romantic poetry.
Poetry is a romantic movement. We haven't escaped it. We haven't avoided it.
We haven't overcome it. We are still living it. We're still there. We do the
best we can with it though they [the Romantic poets] knew well in advance
what we were going to experience. So we do what we can with what they've
given us. People have rejected, even many poets have rejected, the whole
concept of the metaphor that can create a meaning for you. Some poets feel
there is no meaning at all, not even in metaphor. Such a person,
or such a poet might be John Ashberry. It's quite possible. RS:
You mean they look within the technique itself, within the medium itself, and
not within themselves or their lives or anything else? Ignatow:
They speak out of themselves. They draw a web,
create a web out of themselves, a web which only entangles them further. RS:
No real direction. A circular situation? Ignatow:
That's right. But that doesn't mean that I've found all the answers. There
are no solutions. There are only questions, which we try to answer. We hope
we find that metaphor that could answer our own questions. RS:
What about William Carlos Williams? Ignatow:
He carries on in the Whitman tradition. He saw to it that the common folk
were really the substance, the very substance in life, and you have to write
about them and consider yourself one of them. He was a pediatrician, and
director of a pediatric institute in RS:
And you feel you carry on in this tradition? Ignatow:
I am in that tradition. RS:
Was your association with Williams a mentoring association? Ignatow:
Yes. RS:
Very much so? Ignatow:
Yes. RS:
How had Williams helped you to discover yourself? Ignatow:
He pointed out the authenticity of my work. The last half of the first book I
published he said was extraordinary stuff. He said "This is American
poetry." Did you ever read William Carlos Williams’ book review in the New
York Times of my work? Well, that's what he says. RS:
How did you first become acquainted with Williams? How did this association
get started? Ignatow:
That's a good question. We met after he published his review. I knew about
him through conversation with other writers who were reading Williams. As I
began to read him, at first, I was repelled because he was writing in such a
language that said to me he was a great fan of Shelley. I was working in RS:
How much had you published up to that point? Ignatow:
Just one book. And that one book had in it, at the end of the book, the poems
that he praised..."This is the real stuff." RS:
And then you worked closely with him after that? Ignatow:
Yes, I used to visit with him quite frequently. RS:
Do you feel you affected his work as well? Ignatow:
I don't think so. He was already fixed. He was already influencing others. He
was in that position. RS:
How long did that relationship go on? Ignatow:
He died in 1962. RS:
If you don't mind a question this broad, what makes poetry “American”? Ignatow:
Well, the facts that we have to deal with in poetry are typically American
facts. They are nothing else. That's why the Europeans understand us to be
American. They appreciate it. I received a correspondence from a German
scholar the other day and he said that "you are an American poet.”..It could only be the fact that we deal with material
which doesn't really relate to anything in European life or history. We have
a way of living which is distinctly apart from European life. Even though
they are industrialized, our industry for some reason gives us a very
different characterization. Besides, we're a big country. We're a huge
country, for that matter. There's so much more to be said, and so much more
to embrace and contain in our poems. The French, or
the Germans live in a very narrow, very small world. As far as we're
concerned, RS:
Do you draw from different material or do you feel that you are localized in
the Metropolitan Area and Ignatow:
I try to reach out. I've traveled all over the country so there are many
memories I have-what I saw, what I did, what I thought about while I was in
different parts of the country. I suppose that's what he [the German scholar]
sees. That's what that German scholar has found. RS:
Do you feel your experiences become background to something more immediate?
When you've been inspired to write, do you purposely draw from past
experience or does it exist as a background, as part of your personality? Ignatow:
It all depends upon the emotion with which you approach the subject.
Sometimes your emotion is very concentrated on a metaphor and its meaning is
very limited for you and you deal with very limited material. Other times you
feel you have something broad. You feel a very broad sense of living. That
explains short poems and long poems, I suppose. RS:
What makes prose different from poetry? Ignatow:
Poetry is resonant and prose is purely statement. Poetry is significance. One
is literal and the other is resonant. By resonant I mean invokes other senses
about itself in addition to the literal language. The language itself is so
arranged as to allow for other thoughts beyond the literal that you find in
it. The word bird for example, we know a bird as identification, by
its species, but if we put it in context, by a particular arrangement, it
becomes a metaphor, "The bird of my joy." If you just think about a
bird, it becomes for you literal, "This bird flew from nest to
nest." That's a line that's purely a description. In other words, prose
is purely descriptive. Most prose is purely descriptive. RS:
But couldn't you put that line "the bird flew from nest to nest" in
a poem? Ignatow:
If you put it in a poem in such a way that it allows the reader to see it as
more than a literal statement. It's up to the technique of the writer. You
place it in a poem where it will evoke the quality of resonance. RS:
Do you think this quality of resonance would apply to prose poems. In other
words, it's not
format necessarily, but the way something is written? Ignatow:
The arrangement of the language. The arrangement of literal language. It
remains literal, but at the same time it is arranged to be evocative. The
literal becomes evocative. It's the same thing as when we talk about Williams
and "the Bagel.” Williams or Whitman taking ordinary life and making it
evocative, it's exactly the same technique. RS:
And this is one of the crucial or essential elements of poetry? Ignatow: That's
right. RS:
Probably every writer that keeps a journal at times produces very intimate
writings. Did you feel vulnerable or exposed when your notebooks were being
published? Did you work very closely with the editor? Ignatow:
Oh yes, Ralph Mills extracted the most relevant material in those. There was
much, much more. It could have been twice the size, three times the size. He
gave himself a year to work, picking out the
material that he felt was significant for the story of the change that was
taking place from day to day in my life. RS:
Do you still keep notebooks? Ignatow:
Not as regularly as I used to. That was a form of therapy for me. At the time
I was half nuts. In my early stages I felt I was climbing a mountain, a very
steep mountain, and I had to hang on for dear life, you know, so writing to
me was a way of clearing the path up the mountain. RS:
Do you continue to keep a journal? Ignatow:
Not really, not the way I did then. As I said, it was very important for me to
maintain a journal as my way of finding a solution through the chaos, the
terrible disorder and the depression. So I went at it as a conscious approach
to a therapeutic method. I kept writing about the exact problem I was
confronting at that moment...I don't have that same need anymore. I am able
to write without it now. RS:
But you don't keep a journal now. You don't have that same need? Ignatow:
I don't have that same need anymore. I am able to write without it now. I
really know when I have a kind of a moment that needs to be expressed as a
metaphor. It comes to me right away. It is a very different change. It is
some sort of development where I have emerged from the literal process and I
go immediately to the metaphor... RS:
So instead of writing through prose to have that metaphor come, now it comes
through thinking and speaking? Ignatow:
Well, I'm doing the same thinking I used to do, but I don't have to write it
down. It's in my head. I go very quickly through it and suddenly I find
myself with a metaphor. I go through the prose experience, but I don't write
it. I go through it in my head, in my thinking. RS:
Are you still writing now? Ignatow:
Not as much as I used to, though another question always arises that needs to
be answered. RS:
How do you feel about formal education for the writer or poet? Ignatow:
It could be very good. In a way I regret that I wasn't able to go through
with it. Williams
prepared himself endlessly to be a poet. He attended the
university only to be a pediatrician. Not to be a poet, not to study the
language, not to study literature. No, he had to teach himself. Thoroughly,
from beginning to end, he had to do his own reading, his own discussion with
himself, discussion with his friends...Ezra Pound and others. He had a
constant relationship going on through correspondence. And the same with
Whitman. Whitman taught himself. But I don't call that the only way by which
to become a poet. You have to recognize that you must first learn a great
deal about poetry before you even attempt to be ambitious about it...Study
American poetry, European poetry, all poetry, Chinese poetry, Japanese
poetry...Study the works...and the criticism if it will help... RS:
Would you advise youth to give credence to immortality for the sake of their
work? Ignatow:
I can't advise them anything. You are born with it. You want it. You believe
in immortality the minute you are in your mother's arms. You never lose it. RS:
Because we are mortals, we believe in immortality? Ignatow:
Yes...well, all life is a failure in that respect because we aspire to
immortality and we don't get it. We want it in our children, we want it in
our literature, we want it in our own acts. We want
it in our own reputation, in our own character. We hope that our character
once we are dead will continue to be unstirred and praised. The tribal people
do those things. In fact the dead live with them always. The dead never die
for them. And I think it's good, a very good thing. It keeps everybody
complete, together. RS:
Do you believe in immortality? Ignatow:
No, because the world is not immortal. |
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