W. D. Snodgrass Books

Although a biology major, I took a poetry class as an undergraduate in the early 1960s. Heart's Needle was on the reading list. I still treasure this book, and it sits on my-favorite-book shelf with about two dozen other superb books I have read over the last 45 years.

One of my favorite books of poetry. Snodgrass' poems about his daughter are beautiful and heartbreaking.

Good poetry. Let it be noted, though, to writers in search of fame and immortality through their works, that this volume won the Pultizer Prize in 1960. And it's now out of print! And no readers had posted a review when I wrote this one. So much for the impact of literature.

It's true that Heart's Needle is out of print, but it can still be found in Snodgrass's Selected Poems: 1957-1987.

How does one convey the sense of what it means to write poetry? Read "Your Card Read 'Poet-Mechanic'" in this volume to understand the power of Alice Fulton's work. How can one conceivably write a poem about dust? Read "Toward Clairvoyance" to appreciate her brilliance. This book is a work that grabs your instinct and won't let go.

For those unfamiliar with the poetry of W.D Snodgrass this significant volume will hold a bright candle to his genius. These poems are not only new works, but also poems selected from his fifty-year career of writing. His poems are at times creations of verbal and visual beauty while at other times they pick away at the other end of the spectrum of terror. He can be both hilarious and reflective, gentle and incisive, but he never leaves the reader without striking a chord of recognition. Yes, this is 'confessional poetry', but it strolls across the battlefields of Iraq, the petty crimes of our neighborhoods, and the dark sides of marriage and divorce with a tingling verve of style.

One of the beauties of this particular collection begins on the cover with a reproduction of a painting by American painter DeLoss McGraw. Snodgrass and McGraw have collaborated for some twenty tears in a body of works that successfully incorporate Snodgrass' words with McGraw's inimitable 'illustrative characters', paintings in watercolor and gouache that retain the innocence of childlike renderings of people and places and animals that underline the pungent messages of Snodgrass' poetry.

This is a beautifully produced book and by far the finest composite collections of his gifts yet published. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, May 06

This wonderful book of poems brings together over three decades of poems by one of America's most powerful and dramatic poets, W.D. Snodgrass. I had the opportunity to meet Snodgrass a few years ago and the reading he gave was full of humor, depth, and vitality. Included in this volume or some poems from his Pulitzer Prize winning book, HEART'S NEEDLE, a collection of poems published in various periodicals, and the dramatic poems about Hitler's Third Reich. I especially enjoyed the poem's from "The Fuehrer Bunker". A delightful book to give to anyone who loves good American poetry.

I go to a somewhat conservative boarding school and lent this book to one of my writing teachers, who previously had said that there is no way that a political poem can be heartfelt. This book proves that notion wrong. Normally when people think about politics, they only think about who is running for office, but there is so much more than that in this book. This book should be available in every library in both the poetry and political section. This is an inspiring book that speaks not only to the mind, but to the heart.

As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

This book has been a long time coming. Brett Axel has really contributed to the poetry world in a way that is noticed, rather than swept into a corner. Many of the poems are good, some are great. Not all the poets are famous, but most of them contributed good work. I liked Amy Ouzoonian's and Brett's poems, as well as "Pinaud's Tonic" by Michael Pollick. I recommend reading that one. The only criticism I would have of the book is of the extreme scatalogical nature of some of the poems, which do not seem to fit with the theme of the anthology, and would, perhaps, be better in collections by that particular poet, rather than in such an anthology. But, overall, it is a great work.

I liked this book. It has some of the best poetry I've ever seen in it. I especially liked the poems by Marge Piercy, Antler, Diane di Prima, and Susan Griffin, but all of it was good. I think there was only one or two that I didn't like at all and they were short. I'd give it 5 stars but the type was kind of small and I'd rather it be easier to read. My eyes aren't what they were when I was 30.

Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

What you get with this book is an instructive education into the art of poetrycraft. Snodgrass has taken poems written by authors from Emily Dickinson to William Shakespeare and rewritten their work, essential removing the creative spark from these poems and making them dull and lifeless. In so doing, Snodgrass educates as to what makes the original shine.

As an example, Snodgrass takes the first stanza of William Blake's "The Tyger" and rewrites it (or, to use Snodgrass' expression "de/composes" it) from the usual striking variance of its original meter:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

and into strict iambics:

O tyger, beast that burns so bring
In darkling forests of the night,
What godlike hand, what deathless eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

and then into anapests:

O tyger, you creature that's burning so bright.
In the threatening, darkening forests of night,
What hand of immortal, what diety's eye
Dare hope it could fashion thy feared symmetry?

In so doing, Snodgrass retains the original intent of the poet, but reveals how important word choice, rhythm, voice and meter and structure are to the poet.

A masterful piece of work that teaches without being "teachy." I highly recommend it!

W. D. Snodgrass, De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Bad (Graywolf Press, 2001)

I figured, when I put this on reserve at the library, that Snodgrass was going to take poems from otherwise excellent (or, in some cases, overrated; it's about time a serious critic finally takes Emily Dickinson to task for every one of her poems being able to be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas") poets and breaking down what went wrong in them. I was wrong, and what I got was far finer: Snodgrass rewrites 101 poems, taking out the things that make them brilliant and turning them into everything from mediocre sludge to hysterically bad self-parody. In doing so, he highlights what is so wonderful about so many excellent poems better than thousands of pages of explication could; two or three pages of explication at the end of each section is included for clarity and closing notes, to highlight a change or two, but otherwise, Snodgrass lets the poems and their deconstructions (also, the occasional rough draft from the original poet) speak for themselves.

I cannot overstate the importance of this book for the working poet. It should be required reading for everyone who's ever written a poem with any pretense to greatness, and for most, it should be on the short shelf of sacred reference books to which the poet will turn hundreds, maybe thousands, of times over the course of his career. No finer book on (or of) poetry crossed my desk this year; very few finer have ever crossed it. It makes my top five books of the year. *****

What a wonderful resource for students of poetry--whether discovering Dickinson for the first time, completing an MFA, or holding a Ph.D in literature and a full professorship. Snodgrass takes some of the most powerful poems in the English language, and eviscerates them. We are often left with hilariously or shamefully dull, clunky verse, that shows by negative example just what made the original so great.

This is not only a text for use in poetry classes, although the 101 "de/composed" poems are taken from Snodgrass's own work as a teacher. There's plenty of knowledge available to the casual reader in comparing the two versions of each poem and reading the accompanying discussion. That itself is a pleasure to read, direct, lucid, insightful, and often humorous. A definite five stars!

If ever a subject cried out for an epic poem it is that of the last days of the Fuehrer, whatever your feelings about him may be. Snodgrass' poem is brilliant and creative, but....the glory of April 1945 still seeks its singer.