Ignatow-Graubart papers

David Ignatow, American poet and man of letters, was born February 7, 1914 in Brooklyn, NY. He was the only son of East European-Jewish immigrants Max and Yetta (Reinbach) Ignatow. He completed Brooklyn's New Utrecht High School, but the onset of the Depression forced him to leave Brooklyn College after half a semester. Beginning in 1932 and over subsequent years, Ignatow worked in various clerical and sales positions, including jobs leading finally to manager of his father's commercial pamphlet bookbindery (1948-61). Between 1934 and 1939 he served as reporter on the WPA newspaper project and also as a researcher in the literature of cooperative movements. In 1937 Ignatow married the artist and writer Rose Graubart, and adopted Graubart's son David, who was born to a previous marriage. A daughter, Yaedi, was born in 1956.

For years Ignatow struggled to support himself and his family while attending to his development as a writer. He was able to publish many works and become active in the literary scene. In 1933, his short story, "I Can't Stop It" appeared in The New York Talent and was placed on the Honor List in the 1933 Best American Short Stories. His Poems (Decker) was printed in 1948; in 1955 his collection The Gentle Weight Lifter (New York: Morris Gallery) appeared; and in 1961 he published his Say Pardon (Wesleyan University Press). Over the years, Ignatow edited several important periodicals, among them The American Scene (contributing editor, 1937), The Beloit Poetry Journal (co-editor, 1950-59), The Nation (poetry editor, 1963), Chelsea (consulting editor, 1969-71), and The American Poetry Review (editor-at-large, 1972-76). Beginning in 1962 with his appointment as instructor at The New School for Social Research, Ignatow accepted a variety of subsequent academic appointments including those at Columbia and Vassar. Ignatow was tenured at York College at CUNY from 1967 until he retired in his seventies. Over the summers he offered a variety of seminars and gave readings at many institutions, including the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, and NYU. Subsequently, many private instruction sessions and mail exchanges arose from those sessions.

In a career that spanned more than fifty years, Ignatow authored eighteen books of poetry and three books of prose, including New and Collected Poems, 1970-1985 and Living Is What I Wanted; Last Poems (1999). He was honored with awards, including a Bollingen Prize, two Guggenheim fellowships, the John Steinbeck Award, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award "for a lifetime of creative effort," the Frost Medal and the William Carlos Williams Award. He served as president of the Poetry Society of America from 1980-1984. In 1987, he was Poet-in-Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. His wife Rose edited nearly all of Ignatow's works, with the exception of his last two books, which were edited by close friend Virginia Terris and daughter Yaedi, respectively.

David Ignatow died on November 17, 1997, at his home in East Hampton, NY.

Rose Graubart, wife of David Ignatow, was an artist, poet, and author. She studied art at Cooper Union and at the Art Students League, both of New York City. She attended Philip Evergood's Artist Equity class and further worked with Jack Levine. She also worked with the well-known Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Her art is autobiographical in nature and includes landscapes, portraits, period pieces of high and popular art, folk, and outsider art. Her paintings and drawings were exhibited in such museums as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Florida Museum, the West Virginia Museum, the Baltimore Museum's "Seaport Show," and New York's Jewish Museum in addition to one-person shows in New York's Tribune Art Gallery, Carlebach Gallery, Morris Gallery, and the Panoras Gallery. Upon moving out to East Hampton in the late 60s, she was in group exhibits in both Guild Hall in East Hampton and The Parish Art Museum in Southampton, Long Island. For her artwork, she won a First Prize at the Westchester Outdoor Art Exhibit and the Iona College Award for Still Life in 1965. A large portion of her work is now part of the Altman Family Collection. She also published five books: Drawings 1952-1965 (1965), Portraits of Poets (1970), Down the American River and Other Stories (1979), (Surplus Love and Other Stories (1985), and Portraits III (1988). In addition, she illustrated the work of several authors, including Philip Schultz's My Guardian Angel Stein (1986) and Sonia Raiziss' Bucks County Blues (1977). Among the books she illustrated for her husband are Sunlight: A Sequence for My Daughter (1979), and Whisper to the Earth: New Poems (1981). Aside from these accomplishments, Graubart taught workshop puppetry for children and an invisible ink technique called "Magic Painting" in Lexington, Kentucky; Lawrence, Kansas; and in East Hampton, NY. In the 1970s, she designed a painting studio that was built onto the Ignatow home. Graubart was also a writer, and wrote several unpublished short stories and novels throughout her life. In addition, she was the principal editor of David's work until about 1989, always searching for a "gut level feeling of the impact, resonance, and memorability" of each poem, according to daughter Yaedi, and she almost always won over his opinion. Being involved in so many projects and knowing so many people, she was referred to once as the "Gertrude Stein of the Hamptons," although Yaedi maintains that Graubart's personality was less commanding.

Graubart married Ignatow in 1937. They had two children: David, born to a previous marriage, and Yaedi, born in 1956. Rose died in 1995.