A Study Guide for W. D. Snodgrass's "Heart's Needle"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for W. D. Snodgrass's "Heart's Needle," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535824637

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08

Heart's Needle

W. D. Snodgrass

1959

Introduction

When it was published in 1959, in a poetry collection of the same name, W. D. Snodgrass's poem Heart's Needle was a sensation. Snodgrass won a Pulitzer Prize, and the poem came to be recognized as one of the very first examples of confessional poetry, a term coined that year to describe poetry that deals straightforwardly with autobiographical material. Snodgrass's talent was immediately viewed as equal to that of such luminaries as John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath. Indeed, Heart's Needle is almost universally acclaimed, whether as an example of a particular style of poetry or for its own potent message.

The poem itself concerns the poet's relationship with his daughter after he divorced her mother (when his daughter was three years old). Told over a series of ten sections, each written in a distinct style, Heart's Needle reflects on the poet's weakening bond with his daughter. Heart's Needle can now be found in Snodgrass's 2006 collection Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems.

Author Biography

W. D. Snodgrass was born William De Witt Snodgrass on January 5, 1926, in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. His father was an accountant and his mother was a homemaker. After high school he enrolled in Geneva College, now called Hobert College, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. His studies there were interrupted when he was drafted during World War II. He went into the U.S. Navy and served in the Pacific. After his discharge from the navy in 1946, he continued his education at the University of Iowa, where he enrolled in the college's internationally famous Writers' Workshop program. He earned a master's degree in fine arts from Iowa in 1953. He married the first of his four wives, Lila Jean Hank, in 1946; their