W.D Snodgrass

January 13, 2009

W. D Snodgrass is dead. I remember after I’d come home from the debacles of Baltimore, Heather said, “If I were going to do graduate work in poetry, I’d go to Syracuse and work with Snodgrass.” So I did that. I headed to Syracuse determined that I should find a mentor and father in my art, and that he should be W.D. Snodrass. Snodgrass had other ideas. He hated my work–rather extravagantly, I thought. I recall with undimmed mortification the conference we had during my first workshop, where he made clear that he thought my talent was minimal and wondered why I had chosen poetry as my life’s work. I realized during that excruciating hour that he meant something other than what he was saying, but if he thought I was going to give him credit in time to come for administering the tongue-lashing that set me on the upward way, he was going to be disappointed. That I survived his talking-to and kept to the path I set for myself clearly annoyed him. Later, when we did not have class together, and we could find common ground in our mutual interest in ancient music, we were friends. I performed Troubadour songs with both him and his daughter, the Heart’s Needle girl– who played the viol da gamba. His new wife was still a department sensation. She was young, pretty, hardbodied, and wore high leather boots. She treated me as though there were great respect between me and her husband, and that changed my behavior accordingly. I was willing to pretend, and saw the advantage to all of pretending. I took an oral interpretation class from him which was brilliant, and the insights of which I continue to use to this day. I had no particular respect for his work, but I put that to one side as I was choosing him and his university, thinking that’s what a disciple did, thinking I was attaching myself to a man and his discipline rather than the fruits of that discipline. Concerning his work, I never did see what the fuss was about. However keen it was in tracing the outlines of his own emotions, it lacked both restraint and abundance. Though it was full of passion, none of it was compassion. None of it pointed outward. Insight into the human soul was something that cut the sharp edge of self-pity, and therefore to be avoided. His hatred of greatness and his praise for the mediocre was revealing in ways he must not have understood himself. His lecture on how Hardy was a greater poet than Yeats set my heart at ease, recognizing then that there was nothing real to struggle against. I admired that he did not for one moment hide his preference for the attainable height. The point could have been made, though, without the bitter assertion that the Himalayas and the Andes were frauds. He helped me adore Whitman, who seemed to be an exception to his scorn of greatness, perhaps because they resembled each other physically, a detail which I assumed was deliberate on his part. I wanted him to be my master. He declined. He is gone and I miss him, without assuming any right to do so. The obits I have read so far mention his kindness. I’m glad that was part of his nature. I blame myself that it was never aimed at me. We had oral interpretation on the day Robert Lowell died. Snodgrass sat on the desk in the front of the room, batting tears from his eyes. He said, “They are all gone now, Elizabeth, Cal, Randal, John. There is only me.”

I should mention that I did find mentors in Syracuse– Philip Booth, Thornton Parsons, George Elliott, Arthur Hoffman, Paul Schneider, to name a few. It was a good time. And at last Snodgrass and I could lift a glass and laugh like old friends. Only hours like this brings back the sadness otherwise forgotten.

Adam came here to talk about the theater last night, and leave me the script of a play he feels he and I can do together at HART. He sheds a sweetness around him which one wishes to protect, but which is probably strong enough to be its own protection. He bravely declines to remind me that he is allergic to cats when they are crawling all over him.

Dark night, torn veils of snow. Leland installed the gaudiest, pinkest and most candy-resembling pink chandelier in the dining room, which I love with unaccountable love.