[Jennifer Reeser]

W.D. Snodgrass will be reading tonight, 8 p.m. at the Stream Alumni Center on the McNeese State University campus in Lake Charles, for any interested. Alicia Stallings came last week, and was wonderful, of course, and it was nice to see Julie Kane again, among others. Any of you out there within four hours driving distance -- I hope to see you this evening.

Jennifer

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Jennifer

Wish I could have been there. If you attended the reading, and I am assuming you did, perhaps you could give us a report? Thanks in advance.

Chris

[Jennifer Reeser]

Certainly, Chris. It was an enjoyable reading, to a full house -- about as many as attended X.J. Kennedy's reading in April -- despite the flooding rains and forbidding weather we're having lately. Morri Creech gave a fine introduction, saying some interesting things concerning critics and "reductionary" tactics, in regards to the poet.

Sam tells me Mr. Snodgrass, or "De" as everyone was calling him, is 80 this year, and though his appearance gives that impression -- white hair, lush white beard -- his manner was energetic and much younger. He was attired in a full, white cotton poet shirt, billowy sleeves, buttoned to the throat beneath a stiff, dark print Victorian-style vest which would occasionally slip from the right shoulder as a result of his waving gestures. After some checking on the sound system with the help of his wife, (an affable lady behind a group of seats on the hindmost row), he launched into a series of poems and fascinating in-between talk, mostly of a light, cheerful nature (identity theft, fast food, a humorous curse on a lathe worker, a poem to one of his ex-wives, etc.). There was a heavy moment in the evening, with his exposition and reading of a poem dealing with the death of the Goebbels children, though it was followed immediately by an apologetic remark, whence he mentioned something about moving on to a more uplifting repertoire.

He has a strong presence, gripping the sides of the podium, leaning into it with a confident and wholly unpretentious tone. Having sat down after his final poem, the room continued to applaud until he rose again, and read another in a curtain call, then afterwards stayed at the front table, signing books, laughing with everyone and whatnot, while Neil Connelly brought him a plate of hors d'oeuvres from the reception area. I shook his hand, thanked him and said goodnight, mentioning Sam Gwynn had a class last night. He was beaming, very friendly and open, with his wife beside him, joining in the talk, a man very comfortable with attention and appreciative of it, it seemed to me. A jewel of an evening, really.

Jennifer

[Julie Kane]

Thanks for the detailed description of Snodgrass's reading, Jennifer--now I feel as if I'd been there! I wonder, though, did he read any of his Heart's Needle poems, or are they too distant in time and feeling from his current sensibility? They just never lose their freshness for me. I heard him read once at Tulane U. in New Orleans, maybe fifteen years ago, and it was all newer stuff--children's verse and the Fuhrer Bunker poems (yes, so painful to experience as a listener--I wondered, at the time, how a a writer could withstand the emotional and spiritual toll of projecting himself into the psyches of Hitler and his circle; and I still wonder).

[Jennifer Reeser]

Julie, yes, he did, at the beginning of the program.