Snodgrass, W[illiam] D[eWitt] (1926– ),born in Pennsylvania, educated at the University of Iowa (B.A., 1949), where he also did graduate work, has taught English and speech at Syracuse and the University of Delaware (1979– ). He is known for the fine craftsmanship and deep feeling of his first collection of poems,
Heart's Needle (1959, Pulitzer Prize), whose title work about a father's love for a daughter he can see only infrequently, is perhaps autobiographical but has universality in its theme of separation. Later works, also marked by formal technique and personal revelation, include
After Experience (1968), incorporating translations of Rilke;
Gallows Songs of Christian Morgenstern (1967);
The Führer Bunker (1977), poems on the end of the Third Reich in the voices of major Nazis;
Selected Poems 1957–1987 (1987); and
Remains (1985), seven poems originally printed in another limited edition in 1970.
Six Troubadour Songs (1977) prints translations.
Each in His Season (1994) is a book of new poems organized in four parts, using both free and formal verse and ranging widely in subjects and themes: for example,
In Memory of Lost Brain Cells and
The Ballad of Jesse Helms, the latter a rancorous satire in 16 stanzas.
The Drunken Minstrel Rags His Bluegrass Lute parodies Stevens's
Man with a Blue Guitar.
The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle appeared in 1995.
In Radical Pursuit (1975) and
To Sound Like Yourself (2003) collect literary criticism.
