Heart's Needle Comments

Anyone who wishes the full text can get it and much else, at poets.org including the author reading.

Michael, could you perhaps submit the whole and correct original? It is done on this site.

It is something more than a misfortune when a major poem such as Heart's Needle (ital.,) which has certainly influenced, but more likely established, a twentieth century movement-the 'confessional' genre-is presented in excerpts, stanzaic fragments of the whole, and those stanzas are not even in the shapes of the original text. How can a poem like this be rated? Hasn't its rating already been established? Won't it be read as long as there is human language? When I think of Snograss, I think of Neruda. I think of statues in the capitol of the human heart.

if i could bear the brunt of tragic field where blunt ends of havoc wheeled i would forgive my eyes their render, for starry nights cast small the part, and love may pull this needle from my heart if i allow its splender to replace the snow with rain, warm in its earthy spill, and somehow forge the will to move beyond my pain.