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Reading Group Guide

At My Ease Poems by David Ignatow

These poems reflect city life weaving in and out of taxis, subways, and crowds, meditate on chance meetings, and observations of strangers' work. Mr. Ignatow lived most of his life in New York City, and because he was inextricably a New Yorker, he felt that in many of his poems the style of his writing demanded "receptivity to anger, sarcasm, satire, brutality, indifference and anguish, anguish with which all is presented. Love and intimacy were without hope. In brief, it [Ignatow's writing style] was the life of the New Yorker of my temperament and circumstance."

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Discussion Topics

How does Ignatow fulfull his role as poet in the crowded, ever-moving city of New York? What is his relationship with the subjects of his poems?
What about the city does the poem "Suburbia" suggest the poet takes comfort in? What does it suggest he dislikes about the city? Where else in the collection do we see this love/hate relationship with the city?
In the poem, "After Writing a Poem," we see what kind of environment the poet needs to write, and how the act of writing affects the poet's emotional and spiritual self. How is this environment and this self different from those found in the daily life of a city dweller? How does the pot reconcile these contrasting identities?
In "For WCW" Ignatow writes that William Carlos Williams "still is with us,/bleating his lines." What do Ignatow's other poems suggest about the immortality of poetry? His poetry?
Is the proposition in the last poem of the collection possible? Do we trust the poet's sincerity here?