DAVID IGNATOW - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 01/23/1979 - HFSID 203288

DAVID IGNATOW
The American poet, author of I Have a Name, answers the question: "What makes a poetic work lastingly important?" Extremely rare!
Typed letter signed: "David Ignatow", in black ink, 2 pages (integral leaf), 8½x11. Jamaica, New York, January 23, 1979. On his letterhead at York College, to "Dear John Norbutt", in part: "I wish it were possible to answer your questions simply, since as questions they come on so simply themselves, but, believe me, as questions they are incredibly difficult to answer. I don't think I can provide a satisfactory answer for wither question, no matter how hard I try, but try I will. As to the first question: 'What makes a poetic work lastingly important?' The consensus among scholars and poets has been that 'lastingly important' is surely a relative matter. Whose criterion would we use to judge how lastingly important is a work? Let me give you an example of what actually happened between Emerson and Whitman. Emerson had written Whitman a highly excited letter of praise on the original publication of Leaves of Grass...," David Ignatow (1914-1997) was an American poet and author. Writer of the classics Figures of the Human (1964), Tread the Dark (1978), Despite the Plainness of the Day: Love Poems (1991) and I Have a Name (1996). He was the recipient of numerous awards, including Bollingen Prize, two Guggenheim fellowships, the John Steinbeck Award, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters award "for a lifetime of creative effort." Normal mailing folds. Corners lightly creased. Otherwise, fine condition.