EncyclopediaSnodgrass, W. D.
Snodgrass, W. D. (William DeWitt Snodgrass), 1926–, American poet and translator, b. Wilkinsburg, Pa., grad. Univ. of Iowa, 1959. He is particularly known for Heart's Needle (1959; Pulitzer Prize), a collection of poems about a father's love for his daughter. Snodgrass has moved from early confessional poetry written in traditional styles to wider interests and freer formal treatments. His other volumes of poetry include The Remains (1970), Selected Poems: 1957–1987 (1987), The Death of Cock Robin (1989), and Each in His Season (1993). He has published several translations from the German, notably of works by Christian Morgenstern; his Selected Translations was published in 1998. Snodgrass is also the author of Radical Pursuits (1974), a collection of literary critical essays. In 1977 he began The Führer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress, imagined dialogues for Nazi public figures, completing it in 1995 with The Führer Bunker: The Complete Cycle. Many of his more recent poems and a selection of his older verse were published in Not for Specialists (2006). Snodgrass has taught at several universities.
See his After-Images: Autobiographical Sketches (1999) and W. D. Snodgrass in Conversation with Philip Hoy (1998); study by P. L. Gaston (1978); S. Haven, ed., The Poetry of W. D. Snodgrass (1993); P. Raisor, ed., Tuned and under Tension: The Recent Poetry of W. D. Snodgrass (1998).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
