Born in 1926, W. D. Snodgrass studied with Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell and Robert Frost. He came to international recognition with his first collection 'Heart's Needle', which won the Pulitzer prize. Subsequent books include 'Remains', 'After Experience' and 'If Birds Build With Your Hair'.
In 1977 Snodgrass published 'The Fuhrer Bunker', a cycle of poems in the voices of the inner circle of the Third Reich during the last days of the Second World War. 'The Fuhrer Bunker' was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was produced as a play, but it also triggered a backlash against Snodgrass by those who felt that by speaking in the voices of Hitler and his circle, Snodgrass was empathizing with them or supporting them. It is only in the last few years that these poems are being reconsidered and recognised as an important work on American Literature- a new production is currently being staged in New York.
Snodgrass talks with passion and intelligence about his family and education, his career, about the poets he has known, about teaching and about his own working practice. He also introduces and reads a number of his poems.
We hope you will enjoy the 99 stories available on the site. We are proud to open our literature section with such a wonderful poet and such a wonderful speaker. We look forward to future filming sessions with poets Donald Hall and Richard Wilbur.
If you are already a Peoples Archive subscriber, we suggest the following stories as good places to start within the collection.
- My Mother
- Randall Jarrell (Part 1)
- University of Iowa: Writer's block, marital breakdown (Part 3)
- Repercussions of 'The Fuhrer Bunker'
- The Romanian Graveyard (Part 1)
- Reading 'Owls'