Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems

by W.D. Snodgrass

Book Overview

35 new poems and selections from six previous collections including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Heart's Needle.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1929918771
• ISBN13: 9781929918775
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: BOA Editions
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Perfect Introduction to a Unique Poet

For those unfamiliar with the poetry of W.D Snodgrass this significant volume will hold a bright candle to his genius. These poems are not only new works, but also poems selected from his fifty-year career of writing. His poems are at times creations of verbal and visual beauty while at other times they pick away at the other end of the spectrum of terror. He can be both hilarious and reflective, gentle and incisive, but he never leaves the reader without striking a chord of recognition. Yes, this is 'confessional poetry', but it strolls across the battlefields of Iraq, the petty crimes of our neighborhoods, and the dark sides of marriage and divorce with a tingling verve of style. One of the beauties of this particular collection begins on the cover with a reproduction of a painting by American painter DeLoss McGraw. Snodgrass and McGraw have collaborated for some twenty tears in a body of works that successfully incorporate Snodgrass' words with McGraw's inimitable 'illustrative characters', paintings in watercolor and gouache that retain the innocence of childlike renderings of people and places and animals that underline the pungent messages of Snodgrass' poetry. This is a beautifully produced book and by far the finest composite collections of his gifts yet published. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, May 06