![]() Here William De Witt Snodgrass reads his poem "A Locked House." http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171519 A Locked House By William De Witt Snodgrass As we drove back, crossing the hill, The house still Hidden in the trees, I always thought-- A fool’s fear—that it might have caught Fire, someone could have broken in. As if things must have been Too good here. Still, we always found It locked tight, safe and sound. I mentioned that, once, as a joke; No doubt we spoke Of the absurdity To fear some dour god’s jealousy Of our good fortune. From the farm Next door, our neighbors saw no harm Came to the things we cared for here. What did we have to fear? Maybe I should have thought: all Such things rot, fall-- Barns, houses, furniture. We two are stronger than we were Apart; we’ve grown Together. Everything we own Can burn; we know what counts—some such Idea. We said as much. We’d watched friends driven to betray; Felt that love drained away Some self they need. We’d said love, like a growth, can feed On hate we turn in and disguise; We warned ourselves. That you might despise Me—hate all we both loved best-- None of us ever guessed. The house still stands, locked, as it stood Untouched a good Two years after you went. Some things passed in the settlement; Some things slipped away. Enough’s left That I come back sometimes. The theft And vandalism were our own. Maybe we should have known. |
![]() Heart's Needle is Snodgrass' best known poem, and the one that launched him into the public eye. Written about his daughter, it chronicles the agony of losing a child in divorce.
Here is Snodgrass reading the first part of the poem himself: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2118 Heart's Needle 1 By William De Witt Snodgrass Child of my winter, born When the new fallen soldiers froze In Asia's steep ravines and fouled the snows, When I was torn By love I could not still, By fear that silenced my cramped mind To that cold war where, lost, I could not find My peace in my will, All those days we could keep Your mind a landscape of new snow Where the chilled tenant-farmer finds, below, His fields asleep In their smooth covering, white As quilts to warm the resting bed Of birth or pain, spotless as paper spread For me to write, And thinks: Here lies my land Unmarked by agony, the lean foot Of the weasel tracking, the thick trapper's boot; And I have planned My chances to restrain The torments of demented summer or Increase the deepening harvest here before It snows again. My personal favorite of the Heart's Needle poems is number four. The wording is just beautiful. "Municipal flowers," "dwarf marigold," "minstreled." It is just so interesting! Here is the poem: 4 No one can tell you why the season will not wait; the night I told you I must leave, you wept a fearful rate to stay up late. Now that it's turning Fall, we go to take our walk among municipal flowers, to steal one off its stalk, to try and talk. We huff like windy giants scattering with our breath gray-headed dandelions; Spring is the cold wind's aftermath. The poet saith. But the asters, too, are gray, ghost-gray. Last night's cold is sending on their way petunias and dwarf marigold, hunched sick and old. Like nerves caught in a graph, the morning-glory vines frost has erased by half still scrawl across their rigid twines. Like broken lines of verses I can't make. In its unraveling loom we find a flower to take, with some late buds that might still bloom, back to your room. Night comes and the stiff dew. I'm told a friend's child cried because a cricket, who had minstreled every night outside her window, died. Here am I, reading this poem: ![]()
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Snodgrass is funny, too!I feel as if I am misrepresenting Snodgrass by just including the heartfelt, sad poems. Snodgrass is a very humorous, wry sort of guy.
This poem follows a nightwatchman as he goes through the night. He goes from mildly frightened, to self important, to self important and drunk. It is deeply entertaining. Nightwatchman's Song
After Heinrich I. F. Biber I What’s unseen may not exist— Or so those secret powers insist That prowl past nightfall, Enabled by the brain’s blacklist To fester out of sight, So we streak from bad to worse, Through an expanding universe And see no evil. On my rounds like a night nurse Or sentry on qui vive, I make, through murkier hours, my way Where the sun patrolled all day Toward stone-blind midnight To poke this flickering flashlamp’s ray At what’s hushed up and hidden. Lacking all leave or protocol, Things, one by one, hear my footfall, Blank out their faces, Dodge between trees, find cracks in walls Or lock down offices. Still, though scuttling forces flee Just as far stars recede from me To outmost boundaries, I stalk through ruins and debris, Graveyard and underground. Led by their helmetlantern’s light Miners inch through anthracite; I’m the unblinking mole That sniffs out what gets lost or might Slip down the world’s black hole. II (ending his rounds, the watchman, somewhat tipsy, returns) What’s obscene?—just our obsessed, Incessant itch and interest In things found frightful: In bestial tortures, rape, incest; In ripe forbidden fruit Dangling, lush, just out of reach; Dim cellars nailed up under each Towering success, The loser’s envy that will teach A fierce vindictiveness, The victors’ high court that insures Pardon for winners and procures Little that’s needed But all we lust for. What endures?— Exponential greed And trash containers overflowing With shredded memos, records showing What, who, when, why ’Til there’s no sure way of knowing What’s clear to every eye: The heart’s delight in hatred, runny As the gold drip from combs of honey; The rectal intercourse Of power politics and money That slimes both goal and source. What’s obscured?—what’s abscessed. After inspection, I’d suggest It’s time we got our head Rewired. I plan to just get pissed, Shitfaced and brain-dead. |