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Adult Books - Nonfiction - Poetry
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Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems.
Snodgrass, W. D. (author).
Apr. 2006. 252p. BOA, hardcover, $27.95 (1-929918-76-3); BOA, paperback, $21.95 (1-929918-77-1). 811.
REVIEW.
First published March 15, 2006 (Booklist).
If you think that writing primarily in rhyme and meter bespeaks equanimity, or sweetness of character, read Snodgrass. Oh, he mellows out in the face of nature, but he’s prickly. But if it weren’t for whatever propelled him out of three marriages, he wouldn’t have written his extraordinary record of noncustodial fatherhood, “Heart’s Needle,” the title piece in his Pulitzer Prize-winning first collection, which retains undiminished its ring of truth and its emotional power. By the same token, though at some temporal remove, he couldn’t have written the new poem about his first wife’s latest marriage, conducted by the beloved daughter of his early masterpiece, who has since become an Episcopal priest. His many profoundly bemused and persuasive poems of love’s tougher moments, his marvelous angry and denunciatory poems, and the chilling Fuehrer Bunker poems in the voices of the major Nazis during the war’s last month--all these might have been impossible if Snodgrass was a nice, easygoing guy. He’s not that sort, and his best work seems permanent because he isn’t. — Ray Olson
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