SOURCE: “David Ignatow: Three Appreciations,” in American Poetry, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter, 1986, pp. 35-37.

In the following excerpt, Wakoski extols Ignatow's contribution to a uniquely American style of poetry.

Williams said that David Ignatow is “a first-rate poet … to whom language is like his skin.” I would add that David Ignatow is a first-rate poet whose work represents what is most American in 20th century poetry and whose work, like Williams', uses an American rather than a neo-European or “new-England” language.

It continues to be a disease in this country to worship those things European and English as more cultured, more sophisticated, more beautiful. It is particularly a disease our critics have had, and keeps them floundering over what they continue to refer to as the “sloppiness” of Ginsberg's language, or seeing a certain use of old-fashioned prosody as the embodiment of great craft. It is continuation of the...