David Ignatow published his first book of poetry, Poems, in 1948 with funding provided by his father and later went on to write or edit more than twenty-five books during the course of his career. He also worked as the editor of American Poetry Review, Analytic, Beloit Poetry Journal, and as poetry editor of The Nation. He taught at the New School for Social Research, the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, Vassar College, and Columbia University. From 1980 to 1984, he served as the president of the Poetry Society of America, and in 1987 was named the poet-in-residence of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. His awards include two Guggenheim fellowships, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize, a Robert Frost Medal, a William Carlos Williams Award, a John Steinbeck Award, and a Wallace Stevens fellowship from Yale University. In 1964, he received an award in literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters “for a lifetime of creative effort.” He died in 1997 in East Hampton, New York.