SOURCE: “The Work of David Ignatow,” in Sixties, No. 10, Summer, 1968, pp. 10-23.

In the following essay, Crunk chronicles Ignatow's career, revealing ways in which his poetry has changed and improved.

We expect a poet to take pleasure with his words, as he would with his own hands and body. His body shapes the words, until the style of his poem has become the style of the pleasure he takes with himself. David Ignatow takes few pleasures with himself. His poems describe a world of unresponsive faces and emotions. In place of people, guilt; in place of light, brick tenements, and a wall. Ignatow hammers against the wall flatly, undramatically. Yet he carries odd shaped stones out of his inner life, and piles them in place. The wall has no style, and the poet hates it. But he takes an odd comfort in knowing it is there. As Kierkegaard...