About This Title
David Ignatow was, in Gerald Stern's words, the "gatekeeper between life and death." Nowhere is that more apparent than in Living Is What I Wanted: Last Poems, the twentieth and final collection by one of the most prolific and compassionate writers of this century. Vibrant with what Harvey Shapiro called "the life of struggle," the poems address the imminence of death honestly and boldly, acknowledging its necessity and its mystery. Ignatow, as gatekeeper, examines the divided between life and death in some of the most moving and compromising poems he ever wrote.
Someone of the past
Someone of the past is dying in front of me,
her face immobile.
She sees herself in me, dying too.
What we know of each other is dying with us,
no one else will ever know
and still we can't convey
to one another the past events
to live them over with a change
in sight of our eternity.
Did I mean you harm
when we lived together?
Did you mean me to be a nightmare
in your life?
© BOA Editions, Ltd 1999
Available editions:
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Cloth ISBN: 1-880238-77-2
Price: $21.95
Publishing Date: September 1999
Paperback ISBN: 1-880238-78-0
Price: $12.50
Publishing Date: September 1999
