SOURCE: “David Ignatow: A Dialogue with William Spanos,” in Boundary 2, Vol. 2, No. 3, Spring, 1974, pp. 443-81.

In the following interview, Ignatow discusses New Criticism, the popularity of his poetry, and the relationship of his writing to other poets.

spanos:

Mr. Ignatow, you've been writing good poetry—a small number would even say major poetry—since the 1930's, but you have begun to achieve the recognition you deserve only in the last few years. To what do you attribute—what shall I call it?—this “failure” of sympathy? Were you writing a kind of poetry that ran against the imaginative grain of your generation? I'm thinking, of course, of the work of poets like Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Lowell.

ingatow:

Against the imaginative grain of my generation is a good way to put it. Your question, according to the names you list, refers to the period...