SOURCE: Review of I Have a Name, in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 72, Spring, 1998, pp. 169-70.

In the following review, Pacernick contends that the poems in I Have a Name contain the best elements of Ignatow's earlier work as well as a greater sense of acceptance and maturity.

In Cry of the Human, his remarkable collection of essays about contemporary American poets, Ralph J. Mills, Jr. takes the book's title and epigraph from a passage of David Ignatow's poetry: “… to be alone, to eat and sleep alone, to adventure alone: cry of the human …” In his long introductory essay, Mills writes “the contemporary poet recreates himself as a personality, an identifiable self within his poetry …” I have always felt close to the imaginary person at the center of David Ignatow's poetry, who speaks with an unmistakable voice that has remained constant for over sixty years.

In his most renowned book...