and third lines rhyming. The second section has
anabacbcpattern, as line 1 rhymes with line 3,
line 2 with line 5, and line 4 with line 6. Section 3
isaabccb,section4isababb, and so forth. The
most disorderly part of the poem is section 8,
which is the only one where the rhyme schemes
changes within the section: the first stanza of this
section follows an abacb pattern, the second
stanza isababb, the third stanza isabbac,andso
on. This irregularity is appropriate for this part of
the poem, as this is the section that deals with the
most emotional confusion; still, Snodgrass
retains some rhyming structure even as he alters
it, giving the poem a strong sense of control.
Distinct Sections
‘‘Heart’s Needle’’ is organized into ten distinct
sections that tell a comprehensive story when
they are put together but which can also be read
independently. In fact, individual sections have
sometimes been published separately in antholo-
gies, where readers can appreciate them for their
own internal logic. The sections are not equal in
length, and they have differences in stanza length
and rhyme schemes, but they all have similarities
in their structures and, of course, they share sim-
ilar subject matter. Although this poem can be
examined in terms of its individual parts, the
overall effect when the ten sections are read
together is greater than the sum of those parts.
Historical Context
The Confessional Poetry Movement
‘‘Heart’s Needle’’ is often identified as one of the
first confessional poems, ushering in a trend in
poetry that was prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s.
Confessional poetry is generally characterized as
poetry that looks deeply into aspects of the
poet’s life that might be considered embarrass-
ing. Among those who were considered to be
practitioners of the confessional school of poetry
were Snodgrass, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman,
Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell.
By the late 1950s poetry had come to be
viewed as having strayed too far from actual,
lived experience. After World War II, the gov-
ernment’s G.I. Bill provided financial assistance
to veterans who wanted to attend college. A
great number of aspiring writers took advantage
of this opportunity, as evidenced by a swelling of
enrollment in creative writing programs. While
this seemed to offer training to common people
who might never have been able to hone their
writing skills, some writers felt that it led to a
trend toward poetry that focused on technical,
impersonal aspects that could be taught in the
classroom. One response was the poetry of the
Beat generation, a group of writers, including
William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and
Jack Kerouac, who sought deeper understand-
ing of existence by living life to its fullest and
who wrote poetry, prose, and fiction based
on their experiences, recorded in a stream-of-
consciousness style that made the writing seem
spontaneous and unpolished.
The confessional poets, by contrast, did not
reject formal poetic techniques, and they did not
seek out intense experiences to write about.
Instead, they looked inward, at the aspects of
common life that are worth examination but
that often are seldom discussed. Plath wrote
about her damaged relationship with her father
and how that affected her ability to function as an
adult; Lowell wrote about his family and his per-
sonal life; Snodgrass wrote about the dissolution
of his family and his feelings of loss after losing
custody of his daughter; and Sexton wrote about
infidelity and abortion.
The phrase ‘‘confessional poetry’’ was
coined in 1959, when the critic M. L. Rosenthal
was reviewing Lowell’s collectionLife Studiesin
theNation. Although similarities could be seen
in the works of certain poets writing at the time,
few of them, including Snodgrass, cared to have
their works categorized as confessional. For
most, they were simply seeking to do what
poetry has always done: unveil truths. Still,
there is a distinct trend in poetry written in the
late 1950s and early 1960s toward the revelation
of personal details often considered too embar-
rassing to discuss publicly.The Cold War
Snodgrass refers to the cold war several times in
this poem, using it as a metaphor for the unspo-
ken tension between him and the mother of their
daughter after their divorce. It is an apt meta-
phor, as the cold war was a time of hostility
between the world’s two superpowers that
never grew into an actual war.
When World War II ended in 1945, most of
the countries of Europe, Africa, and Asia had
suffered. Manufacturing capacity had been
damaged in countries that had been involved in
the fighting, and populations of skilled workersHeart’s Needle