I find myself often
Staring,
At the boys who go to the gym
And wonder
- God, what would I look like
If I had chiseled cubist pecks?
Think to myself,
Well there’s no better time to start than the present,
Drink another tin can beer,
Then write another chiseled cubist poem.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Chef's House (Alternate Take)...the first had contradictions
One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. He opened the door of his car and left the car running. Wes had stopped on his knees with his fists full of weeds staring at Chef’s off yellow Buick- the piss boat they called it. Chef sat in the driver’s seat with one leg hanging out of the car. He finally pulled himself out after what seemed forever. Wes rose from the earth, his knees soiled in what kept his mind clean- kept his heart dry. They met in the middle of the yard and they took a look into each other’s lives. Chef parted his lips and then drew them closed again.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Chef's House (Alternate Take)
One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. He opened the door of his car and left the car running. Wes had stopped on his knees with his fists full of weeds staring at Chef’s off yellow Buick- the piss boat they called it. Chef sat in the driver’s seat with one leg hanging out of the car. He finally pulled himself out after what seemed forever. Wes rose from the earth, his knees soiled in what kept his mind clean- kept his heart dry. They met in the middle of the yard and they took a look into each other’s lives. Chef parted his lips and then drew them closed again.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef moved a week later and we bought the house for everything we had. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef moved a week later and we bought the house for everything we had. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I will approach my son or daughter when I arrive at such & such age with a winded tucked behind sigh & slight smile & blurt,
-Your father was an idiot.
Let me be frankly honest; I am not a liar. Not that I am trying to present myself as someone who is holier than all of thee; I just can’t do it, which is why I find myself in the back seat of a squad car early Sunday morning with the elegant blues and reds swimming over my face. The evening she is painted with a scrupulous touch, superfluously expressionistic. This is me at age twenty. I have a hard head and a concrete constitution-not to say I’m built- I’m set. Often I have conceived the concept of my ageless self being everything that is and knows forgetting that, perhaps, everyone is very much susceptible to the nonsensery of the mind. This is no life lesson. This is no awakening. This is no greater understanding. This is a slap in the face. This is shame. This is democratic action in progress. So tell me how old you were when you had twenty of them? Did you think about the impurity of the law and the aggravation of the soul? Why or how did it come and what or when will it go? Like this,
-so your name is officer cocksucker?
-My name is officer Zabilski.
-What’s your first name Zabilski?
-I told you already-it’s officer.
-officer ain’t a first name, its ok, shit-head works fine with me.
Maybe my son will get caught spray painting graffiti on the wall of a church when he is fourteen. The younger he fucks up the easier it would be to approach him I think. I was one those ones who didn’t fuck up until I was practically out of high school. Dad was overbearing and uptight- wanted to control everything that I did. He taught at my high school, introduced me to students as a freshman- naturally I was cool. Mom was too liberal to really lay down the law when I convinced my friends to drive through the Harlem ghetto while fish bowling the car, or when I hurled a bottle of Irish whiskey and hit Bob Dylan’s drummer, or when I fell through the glass while climbing the green house at UMASS Amherst on LSD. I suppose they really never found out about too many of those incidents either. They were there when I was brought home by the cops for smoking pot at Salem State or when I broke down from the overt abuse of psychedelics that evening in the summer when dad was grilling for mom and me. I tended to crawl away and avoid the repercussions by the skin of my ass. God forbid I let myself become a reoccurring issue.
-I said who the fuck cares what I said about his mother?
-They won’t tell me the price of bail because I called one of them a Jew and I verbally sodomized another’s mother.
-Where are you?
-Amherst police station
-I was arrested for being FUCKING CHARLIE CHAPLIN. God forbid I mime on a bus.
-You’re an idiot
-Yeah?
-I’m not bailing you out
-I don’t care
My grandfather has a glass eye and that is why I can always see into him so well. Anthony and I were only ten years old when he gave us bb guns and a set of bow and arrows. In the summer we would wander into the woods behind his junked camper trailer and shoot at each other’s feet, sling arrows straight into the air and play run around but don’t get hit, rolled tires from the top of the sand dune towards the trailers and made sure to run when the tire took out the awning of some poor old man’s trailer- and we were young. When sweetie had her stroke I saw that the bitch in her wasn’t invincible. I hated my aunt and I’m sure Anthony hated the way she could be too. I remember sitting outside of the hospital in the deck chairs listening to anecdotes told by Grandpa Carl. In later years I would see him reflected through myself in unflattering ways and wonderful exhibitions. He told me how he defended my mother in a bar once and socked some bitch in the face. He told me how he hopped the fence to his neighbor’s yard (the asshole with the dog) and ripped out a bunch of his fence posts and threw them at his house or how the night Robin fell out of her fourth story window and hit the pavement face first- he drank until he couldn’t see the image of her broken face in the hospital anymore. I was still young when he would drive me to work at the seafood restaurant where I served prime rib and lobster to the elderly. He spends his days mowing the lawn, building gardens, painting pictures of New Hampshire when the family was still young, and taking his great granddaughter Ella for walks at Lynch Park. I can still remember his hogbrush kisses when I was seven, how awful and not like a mother’s kiss they were. They lived on turner st. and we drove from California- the grill on the blue, Chrysler, minivan was full of bugs.
-In the case of Antonio Hernandez charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest on the morning of Nov. 2nd the state of Massachusetts assumes one innocent until proven guilty. Will you be representing yourself or do you have a personal attorney? If you have neither the court will provide one if necessary.
-I would like to request a court appointed attorney your honor.
-Considering this is a first time offence permission is granted Mr. Hernandez, you will be scheduled for another court appearance at a later date and time. You understand Mr. Hernandez that one is obligated to appear in court at every requested date and failure to do so will result in a warrant for your arrest.
-I understand your honor, thank you.
I see through the glass eye and into the walks on Dane st. beach. I see Carl who worked for the city his whole life and volunteers for lunch monitoring at the elementary school. I see the art and the memories captured in watercolors and acrylics. They hang in my first apartment next to Alanna’s trees. I will approach my son or daughter at such & such an age and say,
-Your father was an idiot
I am ageless and reflect upon the glass eye
-Your father was an idiot.
Let me be frankly honest; I am not a liar. Not that I am trying to present myself as someone who is holier than all of thee; I just can’t do it, which is why I find myself in the back seat of a squad car early Sunday morning with the elegant blues and reds swimming over my face. The evening she is painted with a scrupulous touch, superfluously expressionistic. This is me at age twenty. I have a hard head and a concrete constitution-not to say I’m built- I’m set. Often I have conceived the concept of my ageless self being everything that is and knows forgetting that, perhaps, everyone is very much susceptible to the nonsensery of the mind. This is no life lesson. This is no awakening. This is no greater understanding. This is a slap in the face. This is shame. This is democratic action in progress. So tell me how old you were when you had twenty of them? Did you think about the impurity of the law and the aggravation of the soul? Why or how did it come and what or when will it go? Like this,
-so your name is officer cocksucker?
-My name is officer Zabilski.
-What’s your first name Zabilski?
-I told you already-it’s officer.
-officer ain’t a first name, its ok, shit-head works fine with me.
Maybe my son will get caught spray painting graffiti on the wall of a church when he is fourteen. The younger he fucks up the easier it would be to approach him I think. I was one those ones who didn’t fuck up until I was practically out of high school. Dad was overbearing and uptight- wanted to control everything that I did. He taught at my high school, introduced me to students as a freshman- naturally I was cool. Mom was too liberal to really lay down the law when I convinced my friends to drive through the Harlem ghetto while fish bowling the car, or when I hurled a bottle of Irish whiskey and hit Bob Dylan’s drummer, or when I fell through the glass while climbing the green house at UMASS Amherst on LSD. I suppose they really never found out about too many of those incidents either. They were there when I was brought home by the cops for smoking pot at Salem State or when I broke down from the overt abuse of psychedelics that evening in the summer when dad was grilling for mom and me. I tended to crawl away and avoid the repercussions by the skin of my ass. God forbid I let myself become a reoccurring issue.
-I said who the fuck cares what I said about his mother?
-They won’t tell me the price of bail because I called one of them a Jew and I verbally sodomized another’s mother.
-Where are you?
-Amherst police station
-I was arrested for being FUCKING CHARLIE CHAPLIN. God forbid I mime on a bus.
-You’re an idiot
-Yeah?
-I’m not bailing you out
-I don’t care
My grandfather has a glass eye and that is why I can always see into him so well. Anthony and I were only ten years old when he gave us bb guns and a set of bow and arrows. In the summer we would wander into the woods behind his junked camper trailer and shoot at each other’s feet, sling arrows straight into the air and play run around but don’t get hit, rolled tires from the top of the sand dune towards the trailers and made sure to run when the tire took out the awning of some poor old man’s trailer- and we were young. When sweetie had her stroke I saw that the bitch in her wasn’t invincible. I hated my aunt and I’m sure Anthony hated the way she could be too. I remember sitting outside of the hospital in the deck chairs listening to anecdotes told by Grandpa Carl. In later years I would see him reflected through myself in unflattering ways and wonderful exhibitions. He told me how he defended my mother in a bar once and socked some bitch in the face. He told me how he hopped the fence to his neighbor’s yard (the asshole with the dog) and ripped out a bunch of his fence posts and threw them at his house or how the night Robin fell out of her fourth story window and hit the pavement face first- he drank until he couldn’t see the image of her broken face in the hospital anymore. I was still young when he would drive me to work at the seafood restaurant where I served prime rib and lobster to the elderly. He spends his days mowing the lawn, building gardens, painting pictures of New Hampshire when the family was still young, and taking his great granddaughter Ella for walks at Lynch Park. I can still remember his hogbrush kisses when I was seven, how awful and not like a mother’s kiss they were. They lived on turner st. and we drove from California- the grill on the blue, Chrysler, minivan was full of bugs.
-In the case of Antonio Hernandez charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest on the morning of Nov. 2nd the state of Massachusetts assumes one innocent until proven guilty. Will you be representing yourself or do you have a personal attorney? If you have neither the court will provide one if necessary.
-I would like to request a court appointed attorney your honor.
-Considering this is a first time offence permission is granted Mr. Hernandez, you will be scheduled for another court appearance at a later date and time. You understand Mr. Hernandez that one is obligated to appear in court at every requested date and failure to do so will result in a warrant for your arrest.
-I understand your honor, thank you.
I see through the glass eye and into the walks on Dane st. beach. I see Carl who worked for the city his whole life and volunteers for lunch monitoring at the elementary school. I see the art and the memories captured in watercolors and acrylics. They hang in my first apartment next to Alanna’s trees. I will approach my son or daughter at such & such an age and say,
-Your father was an idiot
I am ageless and reflect upon the glass eye
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Fifth Death of Saul Bellow
The Fifth Death of Saul Bellow
I wishing to die (in America-
A warm rain, wet, melancholy,
Satisfaction, completion-
Full,) circular breasts in my bed,
Pink tea kettle nipples.
Upright, upstanding, lifted, & surging with life he bursts into mornings
Of sepulchral dream;
He, wanting nothing but -
-My hands are always those of my father’s
-Paws, darlin’, and you are on a ship
-No, see, well, mhhh, ha!
-See that’s why the water is never water
-Read me and watch the world collapse
-I can’t but you know I used to paint?
-I enjoy drinking coffee with you next Friday
-I thought I saw you once but I think it was just a…never mind
(the death of Saul Bellow and all his damned books)
Let me show you what you’ve never seen before-
Pink
Tea
Kettle
Nipples, read fine parchment
Covered in lovely fire tongues- archaic saliva read by Americans as
novelty.
I’ll burn you if you tuck me in by the roots of your dreams.
I wishing to die (in America-
A warm rain, wet, melancholy,
Satisfaction, completion-
Full,) circular breasts in my bed,
Pink tea kettle nipples.
Upright, upstanding, lifted, & surging with life he bursts into mornings
Of sepulchral dream;
He, wanting nothing but -
-My hands are always those of my father’s
-Paws, darlin’, and you are on a ship
-No, see, well, mhhh, ha!
-See that’s why the water is never water
-Read me and watch the world collapse
-I can’t but you know I used to paint?
-I enjoy drinking coffee with you next Friday
-I thought I saw you once but I think it was just a…never mind
(the death of Saul Bellow and all his damned books)
Let me show you what you’ve never seen before-
Pink
Tea
Kettle
Nipples, read fine parchment
Covered in lovely fire tongues- archaic saliva read by Americans as
novelty.
I’ll burn you if you tuck me in by the roots of your dreams.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Why I'll Never Eat Wheaties
The crimson light crept into my mouth at dawn;
A child no older than four
teeming with life and cheerios,
grasping clay forms with sausage stubs,
building-
cities of thin, shiny plastic.
Your overcast eyes are always searching,
through a storm of oranges,
for the cheer in cheerios.
(Palm full of wool,
eyes of hearth,
a paper heart)
The sea caresses
With foamy fingers
Where the storm is breaking
On the cotton shoulder
Of
The
Coast.
A child no older than four
teeming with life and cheerios,
grasping clay forms with sausage stubs,
building-
cities of thin, shiny plastic.
Your overcast eyes are always searching,
through a storm of oranges,
for the cheer in cheerios.
(Palm full of wool,
eyes of hearth,
a paper heart)
The sea caresses
With foamy fingers
Where the storm is breaking
On the cotton shoulder
Of
The
Coast.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
William De Witt Snodgrass (W.D. Snodgrass)
-Pseudonym: S.S. Gardons
Biography:
On January 5th, 1926, W.D. Snodgrass was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. He attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and was in the U.S. Navy until 1946. During this time he was stationed on Saipan in the Pacific. Following World War II he attended the University of Iowa and married his first wife Lila Jean Hank. In 1953 he earned his M.F.A. and divorced his first wife. In 1954 he married his second wife Janice Marie Ferguson Wilson. In 1955 he became the leader of the “Morehead Writers” conference; appointed instructor of English at Cornell University. In 1958 he receives the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award and the Hudson Review fellowship in poetry.
In 1959 Snodgrass published his first book of poetry, Heart’s Needle. The following year Snodgrass received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Over the next few years he received a variety of awards and recognition for his poetry and in 1966 he divorced his second wife. In 1967 he publishes a translation of Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern and marries his third wife Camille Rykowski. In 1968 he publishes After Experience and in 1970 S.S. Gardons publishes Remains.
In 1972 Snodgrass became a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1975 he published In Radical Pursuit and in 1977 he published The Fuhrer Bunker and Six Troubadour Songs. Since 1977 he has published numerous books of poetry and is now retired from teaching. He retired in 1994 and now lives with his fourth wife Kathleen Snodgrass in New York and Mexico.
Works:
Poetry
Heart's Needle (1959)
After Experience: Poems and Translations (1968)
Leaving the Motel (1968)
Remains (1970)
The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (1977)
If Birds Build with Your Hair (1979)
These Trees Stand (1981)
Heinrich Himmler (1982)
The Boy Made of Meat (1983)
Magda Goebbels (1983)
6 Minnesinger Songs (Burning Deck, 1983)
D. D. Byrde Callying Jennie Wrenn (1984)
The Kinder Capers (1986)
A Locked House (1986)
Selected Poems: 1957-1987 (1987)
W. D.'s Midnight Carnival (1988)
The Death of Cock Robin (1989)
Each in His Season (1993)
The Fuhrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle (1995)
Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (2006)
Prose
In Radical Pursuit: Critical Essays and Lectures (1975)
De/Compositions (2001)
To Sound Like Yourself: Essays on Poetry (2002)
Anthology
Gallows Song (1967)
Six Troubadour Songs (1977)
Traditional Hungarian Songs (1978)
Six Minnesinger Songs (1983)
The Four Seasons (1984)
Five Romanian Ballads, Cartea Romaneasca (1993)
Selected Translations (1998)
Drama
The Fuhrer Bunker (1981)
Moods:
Intimate
Sentimental
Retrospective
Mystic
Melancholy
“And I went on/ Rich in the loss of all I sing/To the threshold of waking light,/ To larksong and the live, gray dawn./ So night by night, my life has gone.”
-“Orpheus”
Movement:
Confessionalist poetry discusses the intimate details of one’s personal life. The poetry concerned in this field is responsible for the “unmasked” accounts of writers lives. It is not what the poet is describing that defines confessionalist poetry but how the author explores the topic.
Snodgrass can be classified as a confessionalist writer by the way he explores the issues of love and relationship in his poetry. It is most undoubtedly Snodgrass speaking to the reader in a most retrospective manner. He speaks sentimentally of the past, but at the same time does not romanticize the nostalgia of his past. He is a realist who beautifully captures the fragility of life and the way it can be broken. Snodgrass is defined as a confessionalist for groundbreaking for the publication of sentimental poetry during a time period that has been described as “the age of hard-boiledom”.
Similar Artists: Allen Ginsberg, John Berryman
Follower: Marie Howe
Influenced By: Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell
Works Cited:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/15.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Snodgrass.
Bernadette Mayer
Biography: Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn in 1945. She received a B.A. in 1967 from the New School for Social Research. Since 1967 she has published numerous books of poetry. In 1972 up until 1974 she edited the journal 0 to 9 and has taught numerous poetry workshops. She currently lives in New York.
Works:
Story, New York: 0 to 9 Press, 1968.
Moving, New York: Angel Hair, 1971.
Memory, Plainfield, VT: North Atlantic Books, 1976.
Ceremony Latin (1964), New York: Angel Hair, 1975.
Studying Hunger, New York: Adventures in Poetry/ Bolinas, CA: Big Sky, 1976.
Poetry, New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1976.
Eruditio Ex Memoria, Lenox, MA: Angel Hair, 1977.
The Golden Book of Words, Lenox, MA: Angel Hair, 1978.
Midwinter Day, Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation, 1982.
Utopia, New York: United Artists Books, 1984.
Mutual Aid (Mademoiselle de la Mole Press, 1985)
Sonnets, New York: Tender Buttons, 1989.
The Formal Field of Kissing, New York: Catchword Papers, 1990.
A Bernadette Mayer Reader, New York: New Directions, 1992.
The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, West Stockbridge, MA: Hard Press, 1994.
Another Smashed Pinecone, New York: United Artists Books, 1998.
Proper Name & other stories, New York: New Directions, 1996.
Two Haloed Mourners: Poems, New York: Granary Books, 1998.
Midwinter Day, New York: New Directions, 1999 (reprint of 1982 edition).
Scarlet Tanager, New York: New Directions, 2005.
Mood:
Playful
Witty
Charming
Earthy
Reflective
-Pseudonym: S.S. Gardons
Biography:
On January 5th, 1926, W.D. Snodgrass was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. He attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and was in the U.S. Navy until 1946. During this time he was stationed on Saipan in the Pacific. Following World War II he attended the University of Iowa and married his first wife Lila Jean Hank. In 1953 he earned his M.F.A. and divorced his first wife. In 1954 he married his second wife Janice Marie Ferguson Wilson. In 1955 he became the leader of the “Morehead Writers” conference; appointed instructor of English at Cornell University. In 1958 he receives the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award and the Hudson Review fellowship in poetry.
In 1959 Snodgrass published his first book of poetry, Heart’s Needle. The following year Snodgrass received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Over the next few years he received a variety of awards and recognition for his poetry and in 1966 he divorced his second wife. In 1967 he publishes a translation of Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern and marries his third wife Camille Rykowski. In 1968 he publishes After Experience and in 1970 S.S. Gardons publishes Remains.
In 1972 Snodgrass became a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1975 he published In Radical Pursuit and in 1977 he published The Fuhrer Bunker and Six Troubadour Songs. Since 1977 he has published numerous books of poetry and is now retired from teaching. He retired in 1994 and now lives with his fourth wife Kathleen Snodgrass in New York and Mexico.
Works:
Poetry
Heart's Needle (1959)
After Experience: Poems and Translations (1968)
Leaving the Motel (1968)
Remains (1970)
The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (1977)
If Birds Build with Your Hair (1979)
These Trees Stand (1981)
Heinrich Himmler (1982)
The Boy Made of Meat (1983)
Magda Goebbels (1983)
6 Minnesinger Songs (Burning Deck, 1983)
D. D. Byrde Callying Jennie Wrenn (1984)
The Kinder Capers (1986)
A Locked House (1986)
Selected Poems: 1957-1987 (1987)
W. D.'s Midnight Carnival (1988)
The Death of Cock Robin (1989)
Each in His Season (1993)
The Fuhrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle (1995)
Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (2006)
Prose
In Radical Pursuit: Critical Essays and Lectures (1975)
De/Compositions (2001)
To Sound Like Yourself: Essays on Poetry (2002)
Anthology
Gallows Song (1967)
Six Troubadour Songs (1977)
Traditional Hungarian Songs (1978)
Six Minnesinger Songs (1983)
The Four Seasons (1984)
Five Romanian Ballads, Cartea Romaneasca (1993)
Selected Translations (1998)
Drama
The Fuhrer Bunker (1981)
Moods:
Intimate
Sentimental
Retrospective
Mystic
Melancholy
“And I went on/ Rich in the loss of all I sing/To the threshold of waking light,/ To larksong and the live, gray dawn./ So night by night, my life has gone.”
-“Orpheus”
Movement:
Confessionalist poetry discusses the intimate details of one’s personal life. The poetry concerned in this field is responsible for the “unmasked” accounts of writers lives. It is not what the poet is describing that defines confessionalist poetry but how the author explores the topic.
Snodgrass can be classified as a confessionalist writer by the way he explores the issues of love and relationship in his poetry. It is most undoubtedly Snodgrass speaking to the reader in a most retrospective manner. He speaks sentimentally of the past, but at the same time does not romanticize the nostalgia of his past. He is a realist who beautifully captures the fragility of life and the way it can be broken. Snodgrass is defined as a confessionalist for groundbreaking for the publication of sentimental poetry during a time period that has been described as “the age of hard-boiledom”.
Similar Artists: Allen Ginsberg, John Berryman
Follower: Marie Howe
Influenced By: Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell
Works Cited:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/15.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Snodgrass.
Bernadette Mayer
Biography: Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn in 1945. She received a B.A. in 1967 from the New School for Social Research. Since 1967 she has published numerous books of poetry. In 1972 up until 1974 she edited the journal 0 to 9 and has taught numerous poetry workshops. She currently lives in New York.
Works:
Story, New York: 0 to 9 Press, 1968.
Moving, New York: Angel Hair, 1971.
Memory, Plainfield, VT: North Atlantic Books, 1976.
Ceremony Latin (1964), New York: Angel Hair, 1975.
Studying Hunger, New York: Adventures in Poetry/ Bolinas, CA: Big Sky, 1976.
Poetry, New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1976.
Eruditio Ex Memoria, Lenox, MA: Angel Hair, 1977.
The Golden Book of Words, Lenox, MA: Angel Hair, 1978.
Midwinter Day, Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation, 1982.
Utopia, New York: United Artists Books, 1984.
Mutual Aid (Mademoiselle de la Mole Press, 1985)
Sonnets, New York: Tender Buttons, 1989.
The Formal Field of Kissing, New York: Catchword Papers, 1990.
A Bernadette Mayer Reader, New York: New Directions, 1992.
The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, West Stockbridge, MA: Hard Press, 1994.
Another Smashed Pinecone, New York: United Artists Books, 1998.
Proper Name & other stories, New York: New Directions, 1996.
Two Haloed Mourners: Poems, New York: Granary Books, 1998.
Midwinter Day, New York: New Directions, 1999 (reprint of 1982 edition).
Scarlet Tanager, New York: New Directions, 2005.
Mood:
Playful
Witty
Charming
Earthy
Reflective
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