In this Book
- Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994
- Book
- 1993
- Published by: Wesleyan University Press
For over half a century, David Ignatow has crafted spare, plain, haunting poetry pf working life, urban images, and dark humor. The poetic heir of Whitman and William Carlos Williams, Ignatow is characteristically concerned with human mortality and human alienation in the world: the world as it is, defined by suffering and despair, yet at crucial times redeemed by cosmic vision and shared lives. His development as a poet is chronicled in Against the Evidence, title of the poem in part quoted above and meant by Ignatow as the metaphor for the whole body of his work.
Where his previous collections have been organized thematically, Ignatow here arranges his poems "according to the decade in which they were written…returning each to its chronological order." Against the Evidence charts the evolution of his themes from the earliest origin in the Thirties to their present extraordinary manifestation in a variety of poetic forms and modes.
Table of Contents
- I. Poems of the 1930s
- Adolescence
- p. 3
- The Folk Singer
- p. 3
- For a Friend
- p. 4
- II. Poems of the 1940s
- The Murderer
- p. 9
- Consolation
- p. 9
- Money and Grass
- p. 10
- The White Ceiling
- p. 11
- A Working Principle
- p. 12
- Premonitions
- p. 13
- Peace for Awhile
- p. 15
- Europe and America
- p. 16
- Get the Gasworks
- p. 18
- East Side West
- p. 19
- III. Poems of the 1950s
- An Ecology
- p. 23
- Communion I
- p. 23
- At Four O'clock
- p. 24
- Communion II
- p. 25
- The Outlaw
- p. 25
- The Rockets
- p. 27
- In the Woods
- p. 28
- Reading at Night
- p. 28
- In Ancient Times
- p. 29
- Bothering Me at Last
- p. 30
- News Report
- p. 31
- Oedipus Reformed
- p. 32
- The Fisherwoman
- p. 33
- Moving Picture
- p. 34
- An Illusion
- p. 34
- The Debate
- p. 35
- For All Friends
- p. 36
- Simulacrum
- p. 36
- The Reward
- p. 36
- I Have Spoken
- p. 37
- IV. Poems of the 1960s
- The Errand Boy I
- p. 42
- Say Pardon
- p. 42
- Be Like Me
- p. 44
- Blessing Myself
- p. 45
- Whistle or Hoot
- p. 45
- This Is Mortal
- p. 46
- A Semblance
- p. 46
- The Rightful One
- p. 46
- Self-Centered
- p. 47
- The Complex
- p. 47
- The Journey
- p. 48
- A Loose Gown
- p. 49
- Leaping from Ambush
- p. 49
- Off to the Cemetery
- p. 51
- A First on TV
- p. 52
- For My Daughter
- p. 53
- To an Apple
- p. 54
- And That Night
- p. 55
- Play Again
- p. 55
- Earth Hard
- p. 56
- The Years of Loss
- p. 56
- In a Dream I
- p. 56
- Figures of the Human
- p. 57
- And the Same Words
- p. 57
- The Sky Is Blue
- p. 58
- Two Friends
- p. 58
- For One Moment
- p. 59
- About Money
- p. 60
- Simultaneously
- p. 60
- Self-Employed
- p. 62
- Rescue the Dead
- p. 63
- Notes for a Lecture
- p. 64
- For Your Fear
- p. 65
- Ritual One
- p. 66
- From a Dream
- p. 67
- East Bronx
- p. 68
- I See a Truck
- p. 68
- For Medgar Even
- p. 69
- The Signal
- p. 70
- Against the Evidence
- p. 70
- An Ontology
- p. 72
- Three in Transition
- p. 72
- Walk There
- p. 74
- Briefcases
- p. 75
- First Coffin Poem
- p. 76
- While I Live
- p. 77
- V. Poems of the 1970s
- Invocation
- p. 82
- My Enemies
- p. 82
- Information
- p. 84
- Talking to Myself
- p. 84
- The Weather
- p. 85
- A Moral Tale
- p. 88
- At This Moment
- p. 89
- The Refuse Man
- p. 90
- With My Back
- p. 90
- The Future
- p. 91
- For John Berryman
- p. 92
- Prose Poem in Six Parts
- pp. 92-94
- Going Down
- p. 95
- Their Mouths Full
- p. 96
- In a Dream
- p. 97
- With Others
- p. 98
- From the Observatory
- p. 99
- The Seasons
- p. 100
- With the Sun's Fire
- p. 100
- The Two Selves
- p. 101
- The Juggler
- p. 101
- Paint a Wall
- p. 102
- Death of a Lawn Mower
- p. 106
- The Life They Lead
- p. 106
- The Question
- p. 107
- The Metamorphosis
- p. 108
- I Live Admiring the Sky
- p. 110
- I Am Brother
- p. 110
- I Want to Be Buried
- p. 110
- I'm a Depressed Poem
- p. 112
- VI. Poems of the 1980s
- My Own House
- p. 119
- Behind His Eyes
- p. 119
- A Cloud Creates
- p. 120
- To Oneself
- p. 120
- In the Garden
- p. 121
- Of That Fire
- p. 122
- Each Stone
- p. 123
- / Identify
- p. 123
- A Modern Fable
- p. 125
- The Bread Itself
- p. 128
- Father and Son
- p. 128
- Above Everything
- p. 129
- Thus Truly
- p. 129
- Between Shade and Sun
- p. 130
- A Discussion
- p. 131
- On Freedom
- p. 133
- Now I Hear
- p. 134
- / Saw a Leaf
- p. 134
- With Horace
- p. 134
- From the Beginning
- p. 135
- Here in Bed
- p. 136
- I No Longer Want
- p. 137
- Whatever Contribution
- p. 138
- The Violence
- p. 138
- The Men You 've Loved
- p. 141
- Across the Room
- p. 142
- Lost Childhood
- p. 144
- Without Recrimination
- p. 145
- The Principle
- p. 147
- The Separate Dead
- p. 148
- In My Childhood
- p. 148
- The Interview II
- p. 150
- VII. Poems of the 1990s
- This Is the Solution
- p. 156
- Here I Am with Mike
- p. 156
- I Killed a Fly
- p. 156
- Permanence
- p. 157
- To Stay Alive
- p. 158
- Shadowing the Ground
- p. 158
- Separate Rooms
- p. 161
- If We Could Be Brought
- p. 162
- Close My Eyes
- p. 162
- That's the Sum of It
- p. 163
- Opening Paths
- p. 166
- My Love for You
- p. 167
- Each of Us
- p. 167
- I Dream I Hurl a Spear
- p. 169
- Midnight II
- p. 170
- It's Not You I Miss
- p. 170
- The Love We Had
- p. 171
- The Puzzle
- p. 172
- Index of Titles
- pp. 173-178
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- p. 179