Lew,
Some very
sad news,
Sam:
“De
[Snodgrass] died this morning at 7:25. His rapid decline began early Saturday
and from then on he had the expert pain management he needed to be content and
comfortable. In fact, in these past four months the only pain he experienced
was from an ingrown toenail (I kid you not) and the irritation of the oxygen
tubing's cannula on his ears and nose. This morning his daughter Cynthia and I
were with him for the 10 minutes it took him to take his last breath. If there
was ever a beautiful death, it was his.
“I would
appreciate not receiving flowers. If you would like to give something to
Hospice, that would be much appreciated. They gave De four months of
personalized, loving care, four months without pain or indignities; they were
there for me as well and will be for the next 13 months. They're funded by
Medicare, but the funding is pathetically meager and they struggle to survive.
Their address is 4277 Middle Settlement Rd., New Hartford, NY 13413.
“Thanks
to you all for your tenderness and cheer. De knew he was loved and that was a
great gift.
“Kathy
[Snodgrass]”
Very
sorry to hear that De Snodgrass has passed away, Sam,
I
didn't even know he was ill. I knew him for fifty years, since I was an
undergraduate at UConn and wrote this review for him in 1959 when Heart's Needle was published.
Here is a past-tense version of the originally present-tense review titled “The
Poet's Court” that appeared in Voices, No. 171, 1960:
While
he was a student in the Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa W. D.
Snodgrass began to write a very personal, very lyrical kind of poetry.
Snodgrass' subjects were those which were closest to him and to most readers —
family, environment, the everyday happenings behind which there often exists
something so meaningful that the average person is unable or unwilling to
confront it, let alone write about it. Snodgrass felt that it is the poet's job
to write about these things. His poetry was a continual stripping away of the
surfaces of our world, and a simultaneous exposure of the mental and emotional
reasons behind our actions and reactions. Most of the poems in Heart's
Needle struck a
balance between feeling and sense, as in the first stanza of "Song":
Observe the
cautious toadstools
still on
the lawn today
though they
grow over-evening;
sun shrinks
them away.
Pale and
proper and rootless,
they
righteously extort
their
living from the living.
The poet said what he had to say boldly and lyrically. His
verse was polished without seeming slick, like stone tiles worn by the passage
of the living. For the most part Snodgrass worked within strict metrical
nonce-forms, but he found considerable freedom within their limits; the current
of his thought ran swiftly and strongly beneath the surface of his lines, no
matter what subject motivated him: divorce, marriage, loss, love, return. His
work had personality and craftsmanship; often he touched a responsive chord in
the reader. As in "A Cardinal," one could hardly gainsay him when he
ended,
We whistle
in the dark
of a region
in doubt
where
unknown powers work,
as watchmen
in the night
ring bells
to say, Watch out,
I am here;
I have the right.
In
various of his early poems the narrative first-person "I" was not
merely the poet speaking of himself, but the persona of the poet speaking for
everyman in the real and terrifying world, out of despair and into human joy.
Here, in this first book of poems, was a man's life shown to the bone, and one
knew it was not made of whole cloth. Many readers were deeply moved by Heart's
Needle.
Not
the least of Snodgrass' qualities was his sense of humor, almost unique among
the members of the Confessional School, if one does not count John Berryman's
bitter clowning. In the poem titled "These Trees Stand..." Snodgrass
acknowledged the humor of his last name in the refrain, "Snodgrass is
walking through the universe." Readers will not appreciate the full import
of this line unless they know the etymology of the poet's name, but will
respond merely to its sound. It is, in fact, two words compounded: grass and the past participle of the
archaic English verb, "to
snid" or
mow; thus, "Snodgrass"
means "mown lawn" or
"cut grass." The third and final stanza of this poem beings,
"Your name's absurd, miraculous as sperm / And as decisive."
Thanks
for letting me know, Sam,
Lew
I didn't know! Sorry to hear it; and my condolences to you, Lew,
since apparently you were friends, and from way back.
Rhina Espaillat
Lew:
I did not even hear this news today, except from you. I vaguely
remember his winning the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1960 (?). He was, what
82/3? It's all getting a bit scary as we see ourselves advance in age while
other contemporaries fall by the wayside. I guess that I did not want to ever
confront my own mortality either.
Wasn't he in some way a geographic neighbor of yours in upstate
NY?
Well, the world is a lesser place without him.
Jerry
Patz
Hello, Professor Turco
Is this
the same W.D. Snodgrass that
Archives has on tape from the 1963 Maryland Writers’ Festival as part of the
Fenn Series of Contemporary Writers [at Cleveland State University]?
Bill Becker
There's
only one, Bill.
Lew
At “Peony Moon” (January 14, 2009 at 10:24 am):
A lovely post at Lewis Turco’s "Poetics and
Ruminations."
Michelle
Lew,
Before I got to Iowa, but when De was still there, I wrote to him
and asked for something for Chrysalis, the lit mag I edited in SF and, later,
with Gordon Lish. He wrote back — I'll never forget — "Dear Mr. Herrmann —
If this is the John Herman [sic] I knew from Iowa, change the salutation to,
JOHN BABY!" I believe I got a poem but I don't remember and don't have all
the issues. We tried to hire him later to come to Missoula, but he was on a
grant or something.
De had
left by the time I entered the program. When I was there, some of the others
were Mark Strand and Marv Bell, Andre Dubus, Ray Carver...it was a good time
then. Engle of course was still director. Cassill, Bourjaily were there, and I
just missed Roth who was there the year before. So
many gone now — Don Justice was a shocker. George Elliott, Verlin Cassill....
I'm reading the biog of Richard Yates. I didn't know him, he was
director at Iowa for a time. But it's a book you'd enjoy. Probably 250 of the
400 people mentioned I knew, some of them very well. Shows the literary
population of the 50s-90s is a small group. Now it's many thousands with the
explosion of MFA programs. The biog is A Tragic Honesty by Blake Bailey,
and it's available on www.abebooks.com for $1 + postage.
Imagine
trying to sell a novel in today's economy. And that is exactly where I am. I
spent over 8 years on this thing, and I doubt it will find a publisher.
My agent even retired from fiction and so I have to find a replacement for her.
From now on I'm sticking to short fiction. There are literally thousands of
magazines now. Most of them obscure and many publishing their little groups.
But that has always been so and probably should be that way. If I put up the
money for a magazine, I'd probably only publish my friends and some big names
to help with distribution.
Damn — I should have kept my notes, my papers, all the letters. I
just tossed everything all the time. But kept a few — letters from Kissinger
(who gives a fuck?), Jack Hawkes, Walter VT Clark, Bill Saroyan. A maybe
important one I kept from W. Somerset Maugham, and two or three from Bellow and
Bernard Malamud. You and I were in a time with some giants. But we didn't know
it.
I wonder
if there will really be a literature of our time that endures like the
times of Twain, Faulkner and Hemingway, Bellow and Roth? Well, Roth is at least
of our time, as is Updike. Hardly any of my students here talk of Salinger or
Vonnegut now. Maybe that's because it is a little branch of a two year school.
I guess you didn't know I still teach one course in fiction writing here. It's
depressing what little reading my students have done. And poetry? They remember
only one poem — "By the shores of Gitchigoomi," or whatever. Yeats? Carlos
Williams? I yearn for those students who used to sign their papers with lower
case letters like e.e. cummings.
John Herrmann
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