From the Summer 1959 KR, John Thompson’s review, “Two Poets,” which forever linked Heart’s Needle to Life Studies.
Snodgrass had poems in the Review in each of the next five decades. The first of these, “For Adolf Eichmann” (Winter 1965), set the tone for his unforgettable long poem, “The Fuehrer Bunker” (Autumn 1979). Echoes of that first great long poem, “The Cardinal,” can be found in The Death of Cock Robin, excerpted in the Spring 1985 issue. In the opening lines of “Call for Clues,” the living leaves evoke the famous simile in the sixth song of the Iliad:
Still how alive he is.