Good evening.
We all welcome you on behalf of the Ruth Stephan Poetry Center
to a reading of David Ignatow.
We have three programs planned for March.
First, a student reading in the Terrace Room
at the Student Union on Wednesday, March the 10th.
Tentatively scheduled to read are
Stephen Chandler, Tom Cobb, Mark Doty, Rita Garitano, Sean
Konecki, and Kathy Waleski.
In this auditorium on Wednesday, March 17,
there will be a faculty reading by Peter Paraschi and John
Weston.
And then, at the end of March, we
move to the Liberal Arts Auditorium, March 22,
for a reading by John Ciardi.
Following tonight's reading, I hope
you can join us for a reception in the Terrace
Room of the Student Union.
David Ignatow is a native New Yorker.
He is currently associated with two universities.
He's poet in residence at York College, which
is part of the City College, or part of the City
University of New York.
And he's on the faculty at Columbia University.
He has been the recipient of many awards and honors.
Among them, an award from the National Institute
of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Fellowship, the Shelley
Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society
of America, a Rockefeller grant, and a grant
from the National Endowment of the Arts.
In addition to writing poetry and to teaching,
he is known as an editor and a critic.
He's been associated with The Nation with the Beloit Poetry
Journal.
And currently, he's the co-editor of Chelsea,
a semi-annual magazine of the arts or literary magazine.
His work is represented in many anthologies and all
of the major poetry magazines.
Wesleyan Press has published seven books of poetry.
First, Poems, 1948, The Gentle Weightlifter, 1955, Say Pardon,
1962, Figures of the Human, 1964, Rescue the Dead,
1968, Earth Hard, A Group of Selected Poems in 1968,
and A Collection, Poems, 1934 to 1969 published last fall.
It's a great pleasure to present to you Mr. David Ignatow.
[APPLAUSE]