A friend of some years here in San Miguel, W.D. Snodgrass, died earlier in the week. De had been in Hospice care for a time in upstate New York. We had many good occasions here, talks and dinners and we attended each other's readings. The last time De and his wife Kathy did a reading for our SMA PEN chapter, 'The Murdered Muse: The Worst Poems in English,' I introduced them. De was a big force in our community, and he will be missed. This is the first year of the many I've been down here he hasn't been seen, his long beard visible and his wit abounding in cafes, readings, over a meal. We did not agree on what was the best in poetry, so we got along on other avenues of interest. He loved traditional form in verse, was of what was dubbed the 'confessional school' along with Lowell, Berryman, Sexton, but he was never comfortable in that. His first book Heart's Needle, won him a Pulitzer Prize at the age of 32. This set him up as an important American poet, though he was never all that comfortable with the careerism he saw in the field. My own background in poetry came out of the so-called Black Mountain School, Olson, Creeley and the nuances drawn from the earlier insistences of WC Williams, Zukofsky. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Hirschman were also major influences. De and I both liked the work of Ted Roethke, though my own favorites were the late meditative poems, while De liked the early work.
But I salute De Snodgrass and the music he brought to poetry, as well as the Falstaffian joys and friendship he brought to our community. Adios, amigo!

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

(from April Inventory)