David Ignatow; Award-Winning Poet on American Life

David Ignatow, 83, who turned workaday American life into award-winning poetry, has died. Ignatow, who won the 1977 Bollinger Prize, was the author and editor of 27 books, including “I Have a Name,” published in 1996, and “Shadowing the Ground,” published in 1991. He wrote his first book, “Poems,” in 1948 when he was working as a reporter for the Works Progress Administration Newspaper Project. Ignatow’s simple, straightforward poetry included such typical lines as “an ordinary man is a message to the world.” He was poetry editor of The Nation, served as president of the Poetry Society of America and taught at Columbia University, Vassar College and York College of the City University of New York. In 1985, Ignatow donated his papers to the Archive for New Poetry at UC San Diego. On Monday in East Hampton, N.Y., of congestive heart failure.