From Deseret News archives:
Poet Snodgrass shuns the 'confessional' label
His early work has been compared to that of Robert Lowell and Randall Jarrell, both of whom were his teachers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first collection of poetry, "Heart's Needle," was published in 1959, and he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1960.
His most recent book is "Not for Specialists," published by BOA editions, 2006.
Snodgrass is credited with being a founder of the "Confessional" movement of poetry, but he disavowed that during a phone interview from Mexico, where he lives part of the year, with his fourth wife, Kathleen Brown, also a poet.
"I hate the term 'confessional' — it suggests a religious connotation, and I'm not religious. I just wanted to write about my own personal life, but a poet was not supposed to have a public life. For quite awhile I had trouble getting them published, but then some poets put them in an anthology and they got a lot of notice. Today, Mark Doty is one of the best young confessional poets."
One of the things Snodgrass wrote about was his first divorce and how his ex-wife forbade him to see their daughter. It literally broke his heart. His Pulitzer was controversial because the judges had previously decided to give it to someone who wrote light verse.
"Louis Untermeyer, the poet and anthologizer, was fond of my work," said Snodgrass. "As one of the judges, Untermeyer essentially gave me the Pulitzer."
The Pulitzer changed Snodgrass' career overnight.
"Schools that wouldn't take me as a student the year before invited me to teach a class or give a reading," said Snodgrass. "The State Department sent me overseas to give readings all over Europe and North Africa. It changed the whole tenor of my life. It also made it very difficult to write a second book. It sent me into deep analysis for eight years."
As a young man Snodgrass had wanted to be a musician. Growing up in Pennsylvania, he played the timpani in the school band and orchestra. "I would have become a timpanist if there had been any jobs in the United States at that time. I did some conducting, too. But there were only 10-12 orchestras in the country at the time."
Then he was drafted. After the war, he thought about writing plays, "but my plays were terrible. So, I switched to a marvelous poetry workshop and had wonderful teachers."
Even though he discovered poetry writing to be his niche, it was never easy. "I still stack up work sheets and just once in awhile something comes quickly. But sometimes it takes days or even years. I don't work on the same thing every day. I put it away for awhile and when I've forgotten it I try again," Snodgrass said.
