Matthew M. Cariello
ONE HUNDRED CONVERSATIONS WITH DAVID IGNATOW
I am good to talk to,
you feel in my speech
a location, an expectation
and all said to me in reply
is to reinforce this feeling
because all said is towards
my place and the speaker
too grows his
from which he speaks to mine
having located himself
through my place.
—David Ignatow, “My Place”
PART ONE
1.
His office had one window. He didn’t know me, but I’d been reading him for years. I sat down opposite and said, “I’m interested in the formal aspects of language, patterns, and rhythm.”
He glanced out at the street below and said, “Well, we’ll do something about that.”
2.
I came to his office with this poem: “Deer stand like thought at the edge of the meadow.”
“Who’s doing the watching?” he said.
I nearly spoke, but he raised his hand.
“How presumptuous.”
3.
He was looking down at the street ten stories below. “Why did Whitman look to the west?” I asked.
Without turning around, he said, “Did you send him there?”
I said, “Not me.”
“It’s time to close that book.”
4.
I brought him a donut and said, “What about things that can’t be seen?”
He said, “Who said that?”
I said, “There’s been a lot of talk.”
He almost smiled. “I see,” he said, and set the donut on a napkin on the desk. The desk was near the window.
5.
“Does a tree think?” I said. The park beyond his window was filled with nearly bare branches.
He said it does.
I said, “When does it think?”
“When water doesn’t reach the shore,” he replied.
I said, “When doesn’t water reach the shore?”
“When a tree thinks,” he said.
6.
I brought him a book. “Are you one or many?”
He said, “I was always bad at holding a grudge,” and put it on his shelf.
7.
I looked out the window. “What about the rain? Is it one or many?”
He said, “One leaf won’t shelter even a mouse.”
I said, “The mouse is always in the rain?”
“The rain doesn’t care,” he said.
I said, “Who’s thinking that?”
“You asked the question,” he replied, and folded his hands in the rain.
8.
I was falling in love. I brought him a poem:
when I say
this is a good day
to wake into
I mean the maple needs
no breeze
to shake her limbs
when I make love
all night
with the daughter
of a smoldering maple
her limbs lower me gently
to the street
where I lie face up
the flowering maple burns
He laughed and said, “How long can you go on like this?”
9.
I said, “What about solitude?”
“Once I worked for a living, day after day filling out forms. Now I sit here in my office and answer questions from students like you. What kind of life is better?”
I said, “When trapped in the grammar of the moment, improvise.”
He paused before he spoke. “That’s a fine thought for a student.”
10.
He said, “I’m looking forward to death.”
I couldn’t think what to say. In the cup on my knee the coffee rippled in time with my heartbeat.
He looked past me and said, “Drink.”
11.
I said, “Why did Whitman look west?”
He said, “It might rain today.”
I was ready to leave, but he told me to sit. It wasn’t raining yet.
12.
He was reading when I arrived.
I said, “As a boy I stood on the shore and watched the ocean. What about it?”
He put down the book and said, “‘If you are squeamish, don’t prod the beach rubble.’”
13.
It had not yet snowed.
I took off my hat and coat. “I have nothing to say today.”
He looked up, waved his hand, and said, “Too many flies.”
14.
I stood in the doorway and said, “What words can I write?”
He said, “The road runs to the edge of the river.”
I said, “Which river?”
Ignatow sat down in the weak streaming sunlight by the half open window.
15.
Behind Ignatow where he sat in the classroom, the chalk board was full of numbers from another class. He said, “I used to admire the ocean. I used to think I could be like water, the first and last thing on earth. I would be tenacious and generous, and anger would disappear in my depths. Then one day a wave knocked me flat, and my first concern as I looked around for witnesses was for my dignity. I’m telling you that the ocean is blind to your suffering. My first mistake, repeated often, was admiration.”
16.
Ignatow stood at the window. “What kind of bird is that, there on the roof?”
I said, “Once at a café I watched a crow rob a starling’s nest of an unfledged bird. The small bird was limp, and the mother followed for a short while, then returned to the nest.”
“Did you finish your lunch?”
I told him I did.
After a while, he said, “Yes.”
17.
A wind came up the Hudson and the air smelled like the sea. I said, “To breathe is to live.”
“To breathe is to die,” he said.
“But to breathe is to live,” I said.
18.
Ignatow said to his students, “Williams once recited a poem of mine at his own reading. I laughed, but only to myself.”
A student asked why he laughed.
He said, “An honor like that is a burden. It’s not good to love it too much.”
19.
It was late in the day.
I said, “What about disorder?”
He buttoned his coat and said, “Soup for lunch, soup for dinner.”
20.
Ignatow stood at the blackboard without writing. He held up a piece of chalk. “If you call this short, you forget about its task. If you call it long, you ignore the obvious. Now what is it?”
When someone raised a hand, he threw the chalk out the window.
21.
Once I brought him a plum.
“I’m clinging to the world!” I said.
He said, “The world is nice.”
“I like wine too much,” I said.
He said, “Wine is good.”
“I also like meat.”
He said, “You’re meat too.”
I thought I would leave, but not yet.
22.
It was morning, and the sky was thick with clouds. We were walking on University Place. I said, “Why did Whitman look to the west?”
He said, “The sun was rising…”
“The west, the west,” I said.
He said, “You didn’t let me finish.”
23.
The day was too warm, and the trains had been slow.
“What about changes?” I said, and dropped my bag on the floor.
He said, “What changes?”
“This, that.”
He rested his elbows on the desk and said, “This to that, that to this. How many words do you know?”
“Not enough,” I said.
“Too many.”
24.
“How about love?” I said.
He said, “I thought you were still hung up on this and that.”
“What about it?”
He said, “There are many solutions, but none of them work.”
25.
I said, “What about love?”
He said, “What you can’t give up will wear you down until it fits you comfortably, like a shoe or a hat or something small but heavy worn about the neck. The shape of your bones changes slowly, but one morning you awaken and don’t recognize the person beside you. Then you don’t recognize the person in the mirror. And at last you’re happy, having seen one real thing.”
26.
I said, “My grandfather hauled me on his shoulders through the breakers, saved me from the sea. Yet when he died, he didn't know who I was.”
He said, “Who brought you to the sea, took the water into his own hands, showed you how to swim?”
I said, “He saved me.”
He said, “Again and again.”
27.
I said, “I’m only able to say these things when I’m drunk.”
“It could be worse.”
I said, “Is that what drink is for?”
“That’s what thirst is for.”
28.
I said, “What about marriage?”
He said, “The day is half over already and none of things I planned are done, but I can say that I’ve decided one thing: I’m going to live with my wife.”
29.
A student became frustrated in class. “You tell me to do this, then you tell me to do the opposite. Just say it: How do you write a poem?”
“First you write a thought,” he said. “And then another. Do this about ten times. If you haven’t lied, you’ve got a poem. If you have lied, you’ve got the news.”
30.
I brought coffee. I gave it to him and said, “What's the difference between you and me?”
“You sit there, I sit here,” said Ignatow.
I said, “What if we traded places?”
We traded places.
I said, “I see what you mean.”
31.
The sunlight was strong, but it was cold. His office was warm, but he still sat at the desk in his overcoat.
I said, “What happens when the bell stops ringing?”
Without looking up, he said, “When does it stop ringing?”
32.
My writing wasn’t going well. “What about failure?” I asked.
He said, “Faking it, faking it.”
PART TWO
33.
Once, in his home, Ignatow talked all afternoon, but refused to give me dinner.
He said, “No, I couldn't do that.”
I left, still hungry.
34.
I brought him a poem.
snow is a new
light on the stain
of the world
a simple thing
to wake into light
under covers
we press warmly
meeting each other
all night
I may lie half asleep
a long time before
I notice
that my life has changed
“Wake up,” he said.
35.
After staring a while at the blank page, I said, “Why do you write poems?”
He thought a moment. “What else am I going to do?”
“Not write poems?”
“Now, that’s a long road,” he said, and sighed.
36.
Ignatow stood with his back to the classroom window. Outside, it was beginning to snow. He said, “Let me tell you about thinking. If I tell you that I'm a fish, am I the fish or the image of the fish?”
“You are the image,” a student said.
“And where is the image?”
“Inside the thought,” another student said.
“Where is the thought?”
“Once it was here, now it’s there,” said a third student.
He said, “That’s the fish.”
37.
I said, “Why did Whitman look to the west?”
He said, “The window’s open. I feel a draft.”
38.
I bought a bagel on my way from the Tubes, but dropped it at the edge of the Washington Square, where it rolled along the gutter. As I chased it to the corner, my fellow pedestrians shouted and cheered, as if they had all chased bagels down the street at some time in their lives. I had nearly caught the bagel when, with a resonant splash, it fell into the sewer at the corner. Even though I had failed, my fellow pedestrians shook my hand, patted me on the back, and then went on their various ways. I told Ignatow this story when I arrived at his office.
“Are you still hungry?” he asked.
39.
He said, “When I’m dead, everyone’s dead, and the dog too.”
I said, “Which dog?”
He told me to come back tomorrow.
40.
I said, “Once you’re dead, what will you miss?”
He said, “Beer, latkes, my car…”
I said, “What about people?”
He said, “I’m only dead.”
41.
“Your grandmother kept one small light on in the kitchen even though she could barely afford it. Many years later you rise one night and stumble down to get a drink of water for your child’s nightmare. If you’re able to find your way through the dark, you’ll know why.”
42.
I said, “I’m always backed up with this problem.”
He said, “Try going the other way.”
43.
I brought him a book. “What is behind the word?” I asked.
“Behind the word,” said Ignatow, turning to the first page.
I said, “You mock me.”
But he said, “I’m not that brave,” and gently closed the cover.
44.
I said, “What is behind the word?”
He said, “Which way was that?”
45.
I was having problems with my studies. In late winter I came to his office and said, “Please explain this theory to me.”
He looked at the cover of the book and said, “Chickens, chickens.”
46.
I had been carrying Leaves of Grass all day, hiding in corners, avoiding everyone I knew. I asked, “Are you in the world or with the world?”
He thought a moment, then said, “There’s another way.”
I asked him about it.
He gestured with his hand.
47.
I said, “Are you in the world or with the world?”
He said, “Consciousness is consciousness of consciousness.”
I asked him where.
He said, “Remember that fish?”
I did.
“It’s never thirsty.”
48.
“I’m degraded by the world,” I said.
He said, “That’s an odd construction.”
I said, “The world degrades me.”
He said, “Your grammar isn’t improving.”
I asked him to explain.
He said, “You become what you touch, even if it’s only words.”
49.
I said, “I’m alarmed by the ugliness of the world.”
He said, “I’m alarmed by the ugliness of the world.”
I said, “I’m alarmed by the beauty of the world.”
He said, “I’m alarmed by the beauty of the world.”
50.
One day I asked, “What is it I’m supposed to get out of this talk?”
He said, “A hundred things.”
“You counted?”
He laughed. “The same thing, a hundred times.”
51.
The daylight was nearly gone. I was late in getting home. Through the window we could see some streaks of red and violet between buildings across the park as the sun set. I said, “I want to see the sunlight for what it is, and not as a comment on my life.”
He said, “If we only knew.”
52.
I said, “I become the rain. What does the rain become?”
He said, “Right answer, wrong question.”
53.
I brought in a newspaper. “Why live?” I asked.
“You have a choice,” he said.
I said, “That’s a choice? What about my family, my friends, my job?”
He said, “What about them? It’s the only choice you have.”
54.
I said, “Why did Whitman look to the west?”
He said, “It’s where the dead will be buried.”
55.
Ignatow said to everyone in the room, “A lie repeated often enough becomes a myth.”
Someone asked what a myth becomes.
He said, “I could say ‘truth,’ but nobody would believe me.”
56.
I came in and sat. He said nothing. I considered my hands. He looked at the clock. I wondered about the shadow on the floor, which reminded me of my childhood room, the one in the city where every morning when light began, and sometimes before, my mother would gather me up and take me from that light into the world of others. I sighed.
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
57.
Before I could even sit down, he said, “When I die, I’m complete.”
“Finished?” I said.
“No, never finished,” he said. “Just complete.”
58.
I met him one morning on the sidewalk in the sun near the diner on the corner. He was waiting for the light to change. “My stomach is full,” he said. “I’ve eaten latkes.”
“And you’re happy?” I said.
“No,” he smiled.
I stood beside him and waited.
59.
One day I walked over to the Strand to search for something I didn’t know, a book about fish, or trees, an explanation of DNA, a history of Manhattan streams and ponds, anything new. The books were stacked on tables, waist high, chest high; on ten-foot shelves a hundred feet long, end to end to end. I trudged up and down the aisles in my heavy coat, touching the spines, sometimes reading titles. I left emptyhanded, walked back to Washington Square, and sat in the cold looking up at the windows as everyone went past on the sidewalk. Sometime after four o’clock, Ignatow emerged from a doorway across the street, waved to me, and went home.
60.
We were on our way to class, walking quickly down the hall, but without hurry.
“What about imitation?” I said. “What if I write like you, or whoever my teacher is, and suppose I do it just to ingratiate myself to your good favor? Suppose I do it be popular, to get published?”
He thought a moment. “Do you mean the same words?”
“Same way, different words.”
“Ways or words, what makes you think they’re mine?”
“I’m talking about style,” I said.
He nodded. We stopped at the elevator. Ignatow never took the stairs, not even for one flight, not even if the elevator was so crowded that not even one person more could fit.
“Style,” he said, and the doors opened to the empty car.
61.
The chalkboard was blank. Ignatow sat in silence a long time. When he spoke, his voice was low and steady. “This poem is too smart,” he said. “It thinks it knows where it’s going. It thinks it knows how to get there. Except for this one word. This word rescues the poem. This word is dumb. The only thing it knows is that it’s lost. That’s the poem, not all this brilliance.”
The snow had been melting all day and would continue to melt all night.
62.
I brought him a poem:
in this city
people stand on roofs
are they watching
while above us
the sky lightens
the trees you’ve got
to look at
the presents already
bought the play
already begun
plans made for
the day half over
interrupted
by what happens
between one minute
and another
a light that passes
in secret places
He told me to come back tomorrow.
PART THREE
63.
I sat on the banks of the Hudson and considered the water. I could see that the river flowed two ways, out to sea with the current, and then back in with the tide. Twice a day, it changed direction and, as far as I knew, had been doing this forever.
I told Ignatow this before lunch and asked him what it meant. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe it’s not really a river. Or maybe sometimes it’s a river and sometimes not. Or maybe…”
But I told him to please stop there.
64.
“Would it matter if you never published a word?” I said.
“Life is a sickness, and poetry seeks a cure. It’s impossible, of course, but one has to try. Would I care if no one else heard me? I don’t want to be admired for anything other than a good epitaph.”
65.
“It has nothing to do with you. All this pushing and pulling, rolling over and over, the sweet smell of the marsh, wet petals and hard roots. We do it because we’re meant to do it, year after year, until we can’t bear it anymore, and then we just watch, in wonder at our former self-importance. You don’t know what I’m saying, not yet. But some day, if you care to notice, you’ll be pleased with simply having made it this far and having remembered where you were.”
66.
It was the middle of the month when I asked, “What happens every day?”
“Every day,” he said.
I said, “You just repeat me.”
He said, “You didn’t let me finish.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Now I’m done.”
67.
The brick wall of the school was covered with sunlight, and as I walked past, my shadow rippled along beside me, stopping as I stopped and running as I ran, and at the corner it was gone, only to spring up beside me again at the next building, and this kept happening all the way down the street until I stopped and cursed the shadow for mocking me and demanded that it stop following me or preceding me in my movements and judgments, whereupon I entered the building and left my shadow on the sidewalk to be trampled by whoever walked by.
And I sat opposite Ignatow in the warm classroom and said nothing all evening.
68.
I brought him a poem.
when after
silence she speaks
leaves fall
before they fall
that distance
becomes futile
not her but
the earth
rushes up
to meet the leaf
“And if it rains?” he said.
69.
When I emerged from the subway, I saw, perched on the top of a traffic light, a bird. What kind of bird was it? I couldn’t say. I saw it in profile, and for a long while it didn’t move. It was small and slender, with a sharp beak for eating seeds. There were no other birds with it. The traffic light changed colors several times, and still the bird didn’t move. Someone bumped me from behind. I was blocking the sidewalk, after all. Then another person bumped me, and another. A minute later someone grabbed my elbow and pushed me around. Then another person pushed me back the other way. Soon I was surrounded by a small crowd of people, who took turns pushing me back and forth. As I was shoved down the sidewalk, I looked up at the bird on the traffic light, who still hadn’t moved and wasn’t looking at me.
“And yet here you are,” said Ignatow as I brushed the dirt from my shoulders.
70.
“What’s more important than all the poems ever written?” I said.
Ignatow sighed. In fourteen years, he’d be dead, but he didn’t know that.
“What’s more important than all the wisdom of all the poems ever written?”
He sighed again, and raising one finger of his right hand, said, “Latkes.”
71.
I had been searching for Ignatow for hours when, from across the street, I saw him emerge from a door on Broadway and wave. The traffic was heavy and didn’t stop. “How do I cross?” I shouted above the noise. “How do I get to the other side of the street?”
He looked north and south, east and west. His voice was small but clear. “You are on the other side.”
72.
I bought an everything bagel. It had sesame seeds, poppy seeds, onion, garlic, and, of course, salt. Not really everything, but pretty close. I couldn’t imagine what it tasted like, so I brought it to Ignatow.
“What is this?” I said.
He took it in his hands and carefully examined each side, then placed it on the desk before him.
“Well, what is it?” I asked again.
It was some time before he spoke. “What, they don’t have bagels where you come from?”
73.
He was still wearing his coat, hat, gloves, and boots. He was sitting in his chair, with his feet up on the radiator, which was steaming. The window was shut, and the sunlight streamed through the glass. He was reading the newspaper.
“Are you comfortable?” I asked.
He swung around in the chair to face me. “I make a living,” he said.
74.
“Every day I cross the Hudson,” I said. “Sometimes on the bridge, sometimes in the tunnels. On weekends I sit on the banks of the river and watch it go. In the morning it goes down to the ocean, and in the afternoon it flows up toward the mountains. Every day it goes up and down, and every day I go back and forth. Back and forth, up and down. So what does it all mean?”
“Life is like a river,” Ignatow said.
“Life is like a river? That’s it?”
He looked up at me from where he sat. “Or not.”
75.
“Why did Whitman look to the west?” I said.
“Go ask that tree,” he said.
“What would a tree know?” I said. “I don’t get it.”
“Me neither,” he said.
76.
“What do you want from your poem?” he said.
“Silence,” I replied.
He looked at me. “Fifty years is a long time.”
77.
“What do you want your poem to do?” he asked.
“Find its center,” I replied.
“Fill the box,” he said. “But then you’ll have to empty it.”
78.
“What do you want your poem to do?” he said.
“It’s a little machine,” I said. “It’ll work on its own.”
“Who said that?” he replied.
79.
“What do you want from your poem?” he said.
“Nothing,” I replied.
“So you think it’s like a river?” he said.
80.
“What’s more important than the poem?” he said.
“What’s before and after it,” I replied.
“No,” he said. “Latkes.”
81.
I said, “Are you one or many?”
He said, “Trying doesn’t make it so.”
82.
Ignatow entered the room in his long overcoat and scarf, head bare. He sat at the desk before us. He said, “I’ve just walked from the subway where a legless man sat propped up against the wall. On the way here I saw men getting haircuts while a television showed the dead being carried away on stretchers. On Broadway a bus nearly knocked me down. Today I looked at a thousand faces of people I’d never seen before. Somewhere in this city a man is thinking about murdering his wife. This morning I listened to Bach and drank coffee in a clean café. And my only question is the same question as I had fifty years ago. I’m happy about the music and angry about the bodies, yet how can there be one without the other? My only reconciliation is to sit and imagine that eventually neither will matter, or both, just the same.”
83.
He sat at the end of the long table and placed an apple by his left hand.
He talked about Whitman and Williams and Stevens, about prosody, form, and honesty. He said that the best poems could disappear and still be true. He said that worst ones insist on their truth.
As he spoke, I watched the apple. It was large as a fist and, flecked as it was with yellow, brown, and green, seemed to spin slowly in place.
Ignatow listened patiently to our questions, answered as best he could, and, when it was time to leave, pushed back his chair and stood. As he was packing his briefcase, I said, “What about the apple?”
“What apple?” he replied and handed it to me.
84.
Ignatow spilled his tea when the cup slipped from his hand and fell. The cup broke, and the tea spread slowly across the table. When the waitress came, she asked if he wanted more.
“What for?” he said. “It’s still tea.”
85.
Ignatow spilled his tea when the cup slipped from his hand and fell. The cup broke, and the tea spread slowly across the table. We watched as the steaming pool seemed to stop a moment at the edge before dripping to the tiles below. The puddle grew larger until the entire floor was covered with tea, and then the vestibule, the sidewalk and the street. Before long, lower Manhattan was under a river of tea. Then the tide took it nearly up to Albany and then back down into the Atlantic Ocean, where it disappeared forever.
86.
“Are you one or many?” I asked as we walked down the hall.
“Imagine that,” he replied.
I stopped walking, but he continued.
87.
I was walking east on Ninth Street when I heard someone call my name. I turned to look, and saw many people, but no one was waving or shouting to me, so I continued.
Again a voice called my name, and again I stopped to see who was trying to get my attention. But no one was there.
A third time I heard my name. But this time I didn’t stop but kept walking until I got to his office and told him what had happened.
“It’s a big city,” he said, and shrugged. “Matthew.”
88.
We had just eaten latkes and were walking slowly through Washington Square Park.
“Why did Whitman look to the west?” he said.
“The west,” I replied.
Ignatow reached over the iron railing to the grass beside the path, picked up a small branch that had fallen from a tree, broke it in half, and handed me one piece.
89.
His office window was open, and a vague smell of spring drifted in from Washington Square. Ignatow sat at his desk with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand.
“I’ve killed a fly,” he said, still looking down at his desk. “Where did it come from? What swamp? What corpse or pile of shit did it first crawl from? How high did it fly? What stench brought it in the window to my desk?” He flicked at it with his finger. “How many eggs has it laid? How many thighs has it bitten?”
“Why did you kill it?” I said.
He looked up at me for a moment, then in one motion swept the fly to the floor with the newspaper.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I’m tired of being alive.”
90.
Ignatow was silent for a long time after a student had read her poem. The window behind him was blank to the dark street below. Nothing but more windows across the way.
When he began to speak, he was smiling. “Somewhere near the Indian Ocean a million people are dying from dysentery because they shit in their drinking water, and all I could do this morning was write a poem about myself. Go ahead and bake your bread, learn French, spend your summers on the Cape. Write about your life. All I’m saying is a million people are dying and I’m just fine, thanks.”
91.
“Last night I had a dream,” I said. “I dreamed my grandfather was young and vigorous. I dreamed he was running with me in a race. He was going so fast that he passed me and kept going, until I couldn’t see him anymore. When I woke, Wendy said I was laughing in my sleep.”
“And so you’re happy now?” said Ignatow.
“No,” I said. “I’m sad beyond words. I can barely move.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “He’ll wait for you near the end.”
92.
Ignatow said to everyone in the room, “There’s no way to escape from a good poem.”
A student asked, “What about contingent meanings?”
Another student laughed and said, “Contingent on whom?”
Ignatow stood and left the room.
93.
As I crossed Broadway, I saw a group of men staring into a hole they had dug in the street with a backhoe. Five of them, standing there, looking down into the pit. Every few minutes one of them would speak, or begin to speak, shake his head, move his feet. But none of them took their eyes off the hole. Around them the traffic swirled, stopped, pushed on.
“Fierce labor,” said Ignatow as he stood beside me.
94.
When I asked why Whitman looked to the west, Ignatow said, “Everything is always across the river.”
95.
“What’s good today?” Ignatow asked the waitress.
“Everything’s good,” she said. “There’s nothing that’s not good.”
Ignatow closed his eyes.
96.
He stood in the hall and said, “I’m looking forward to death.”
I said, “When?”
He stopped before his door. “I’m always halfway there.”
97.
I once asked Ignatow, “If a poem isn’t any good, what should I do?”
“Throw it out,” said Ignatow.
“But what if I can’t throw it out?”
Ignatow sighed. “Then carry it out.”
98.
I brought him a poem, but Ignatow simply frowned and handed it back. Then next time, he frowned again, and again handed the poem back. This went on for eight months, until one day I gave him the poem, and he refused to give it back. He opened his desk drawer and put it inside.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just my job.”
99.
I brought him a poem:
sunlight will
surround a day
and falling shifts
whatever is solid about
seeking out perspectives
light cutting and
recutting the alley—
a man and a woman
falling this way
and that falling
how sun falls
always into place
He sat at his desk, back to the window, looked at the page, looked at his hands.
100.
“Why did Whitman look to the west?” I said.
Ignatow turned toward the window, his back to me, but I could see his face reflected in the glass. Far away, out of sight on the other side of the Hudson, the sun was setting.
MATTHEW M. CARIELLO is the author of two books of poems, A Boat That Can Carry Two and Talk, both published by Bordighera Press. He is a senior lecturer in the English department at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
