On Books:

One of the pleasures in reading the selected works of a poet who has lasted 50 years of publishing is watching the progression of his or her career. Last year, BOA Editions published W. D. Snodgrass's Not for Specialists, New and Selected Poems, which I've just finished reading.

The book opens with a poem from Snodgrass's first collection, Heart's Needle (1959):

These Trees Stand …

These trees stand very tall under the heavens.
While they stand, if I walk, all stars traverse
This steep celestial gulf their branches chart.
Though lovers stand at sixes and at sevens
While civilizations come down with the curse,
Snodgrass is walking through the universe.

I can't make any world go around your house.
But note this moon. Recall how the night nurse
Goes ward rounds by the mild, reflective art
Of focusing her flashlight on her blouse.
Your name's safe conduct into love or verse;
Snodgrass is walking through the universe.

Your name's absurd, miraculous as sperm
And as decisive. If you can't coerce
One thing outside yourself, why you're the poet!
What irrefrangible atoms whirl, affirm
Their destiny and form Lucinda's skirts!
She can't make up your mind. Soon as you know it,
Your firmament grows touchable and firm.
If all this world runs battlefield or worse,
Come, let us wipe our glasses on our shirts:
Snodgrass is walking through the universe.


And from this point on we inhabit Snodgrass's vision, which includes sections from his intriguing poetic take on the last days of World War II through the imagined and sometimes real words of Hitler and his compatriots from the bunker in The Fuehrer Bunker, the cycle of poems first published in 1977 and finished in 1995. These poems continue Snodgrass's playfulness in language brought to bear on serious topics, demonstrating the value that comes from a master investigating his topic, his characters through a series of works, not unlike Updike and Faulkner in their novels and short stories. There is a reason we celebrate those writers who approach a topic or characters at more than one front, although we might not be able to place our fingers precisely on why this is so appealing to us.

The book ends with

Invitation

Come live with me and be my last
Resource, location and resort,
My workday's focus and steadfast
Distraction to a weekend's sport.

Come end up with me, close my list;
Blank my black book, block every e-mail
From ex-loves whose mouths won't be missed;
Let nothing else alive look female.

Come couch with me mit Freud und Lust
As every evening's last connection.
Talk to me; prove the day like Proust;
Let what comes next rise to inspection.

Come, let old aftermaths get lost,
let failures and betrayals mend,
Cancel repayments; clear the cost;
Once more unto the breach, dear friend.

Come lay us down to sleep at least,
Sharing this pillow's picture show.
Who's been my braintrust and best beast?
Who else knows what I need to know?


Snodgrass may be one of our least appreciated truly important poets. Thanks to BOA Edtions, a non-profit publisher, his work continues to be available to us. Maybe not all is wrong in the publishing world after all.