This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is David Ignatow’s “Business” from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934-1994 (1995).

 

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Business

There is no money in breathing.
What a shame I can’t peddle my breath
for something else—like what?
I wish I knew but surely
besides keeping me alive
breathing doesn’t give enough
of a return.

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DAVID IGNATOW (1914-1997) was the author of fifteen volumes of poetry and three prose collections. Born in Brooklyn, he lived most of his life in the New York metropolitan area, working as editor of American Poetry Review and Beloit Poetry Journal, and also as poetry editor of The Nation. Ignatow received both the Shelley Memorial Award (1966) and the Frost Medal (1992). He also received the Bollingen Prize, two Guggenheim fellowships, and countless other awards.