Not for Specialists

Summary

Until the late 1970s, W.D. Snodgrass was known primarily as a confessional poet and a key player in the emergence of that mode of poetry in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Snodgrass makes poetry out of the daily neuroses and everyday failures of a man-a husband, father, and teacher. This domestic suffering occurs against a backdrop of more universal suffering which Snodgrass believes is inherent in the human experience. Not for Specialists includes 35 new poems complemented by the superb work he wrote in the Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Heart's Needle, along with poetry from five other distinguished collections. from "Nocturnes" Seen from higher up, it makes its first move in the low creekbed, the marshlands down the valley, spreading across the open hayfields, the hedgerows with their tops still lit, laps the roadbed, flows over lawns and gardens, past the house and up the wooded hillside back behind us till only some few rays still scythe between the treetrunks from the far horizon and are gone. W. D. Snodgrass, born in Pennsylvania in 1926, is the author of more than 20 books of poetry, including The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle (BOA, 1995); Each in His Season (BOA, 1993); and Heart's Needle (1959), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other books include To Sound Like Yourself: Essays on Poetry (BOA, 2002), After-Images: Autobiographical Sketches (BOA, 1999) and six volumes of translation, including Selected Translations (BOA Editions, 1998), which won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

These trees stand ...	p. 13
Ten days leave	p. 14
Returned to Frisco, 1946	p. 16
April inventory	p. 17
Heart's needle	p. 19
"After experience taught me ..."	p. 37
The examination	p. 39
A flat one	p. 41
Lying awake	p. 45
Lobsters in the window	p. 46
What we said	p. 47
Leaving the motel	p. 48
A friend	p. 49
No use	p. 50
The lovers go fly a kite	p. 51
Van Gogh : "the starry night"	p. 53
The mother	p. 61
The mouse	p. 63
Viewing the body	p. 64
Disposal	p. 65
Fourth of July	p. 66
To a child	p. 68
An elm tree	p. 73
Old apple trees	p. 76
A Phoebe's nest	p. 78
Owls	p. 81
Mutability	p. 82
The last time	p. 83
A valediction	p. 84
A locked house	p. 85
Old jewelry	p. 87
A seashell	p. 88
Love lamp	p. 89
Chorus : "old lady barkeep"	p. 93
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, "days, American bombing flights"	p. 94
Martin Bormann, "dearest beloved momsy girl"	p. 97
Albert Speer, "so / I am / reborn?"	p. 99
Hermann Goering, "and why, Herr Reichsmarschall ..."	p. 101
Heinrich Himmler, "astral signs suggest"	p. 103
Adolf Hitler, "down : I got it all : almost"	p. 104
Albert Speer, "we / saved / the bridges"	p. 107
Magda Goebbels, "now Joseph's sister's offered us ..."	p. 109
Heinrich Himmler, "Aryan purity a strain"	p. 110
Adolf Hitler, "best stuffed in a bag and drowned"	p. 112
Eva Braun, "tea for two/ and two for tea"	p. 116
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, "stand back, make way ..."	p. 120
Adolf Hitler, "'to master the world ...'"	p. 123
Magda Goebbels, "this is the needle that we give"	p. 126
Hermann Goering, "when I speak to you ..."	p. 130
Heinrich Himmler, "an, eye-patch"	p. 132
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, "say goodbye to the help ..."	p. 134
Chorus : "old lady barkeep"	p. 135
Seasoned chairs for a child	p. 139
W. D. Picks a bouquet for cock robin ...	p. 143
W. D. Sits in Kafka's chair and is interrogated ...	p. 144
Auction	p. 145
The capture of Mr. Sun	p. 147
A strolling minstrel's ballad ...	p. 148
The carnival girl darkly attracts W.D.	p. 149
Wire walker	p. 150
The drunken minstrel rags his bluegrass lute	p. 152
W.D. studies the spectra of departure	p. 155
Disguised as Humpty-Dumpty ...	p. 156
Dance suite : hip hop	p. 158
The poet ridiculed by hysterical academics	p. 160
From Spring suite	p. 165
From Summer sequence	p. 169
From Autumn variations	p. 174
From Snow songs	p. 177
Birds caught, birds flying	p. 181
Elena Ceaucescu's bed	p. 183
In memory of lost brain cells	p. 184
An envoi, post-TURP	p. 186
A curse	p. 187
From In flower	p. 190
The discreet advantages of a Reichstag fire	p. 195
Talking heads	p. 197
Gringoloandia	p. 198
On the streets	p. 200
Lady! -	p. 202
At the villa	p. 204
Farm kids	p. 205
Leavings	p. 206
On high	p. 207
Song slam	p. 208
Ruffed grouse	p. 209
Who steals my good name	p. 210
Nocturne : i : "leave your glasses"	p. 211
Nocturne : ii : "seen from high up"	p. 211
Nocturne : iii : "from the blocked-up chimney's side"	p. 211
Nocturne : iv : "night voices	p. 211
Nocturne : v : "at hearing's far edge"	p. 211
Nocturne : vi : at home, lost	p. 211
Nocturne : vii : "square by square"	p. 211
Nightwatchman's song	p. 217
Chasing fireflies	p. 220
Fast foods : a rap Rondeau	p. 222
Lasting	p. 223
Parents	p. 224
Sitting outside	p. 225
Pacemaker	p. 226
Packing up the lute	p. 228
For Hugues Cuenod	p. 229
Warning	p. 231
A forty gun salute	p. 232
Critic	p. 233
Guru	p. 234
Lifelong	p. 235
A separation anthem	p. 236
A presence	p. 237
For the third marriage of my first ex-wife	p. 238
Phone message	p. 240
The moth chorale	p. 241
Double forte	p. 242
Invitation	p. 243
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