Family Breakdown In Snodgrass's Poem

In section one through four, both the father and his daughter suffer through the consequences of the family breakdown. In the first section the daughter is described as “a landscape of new snow” which suggests innocence and peace. But in section two, she starts to show signs of destructive behavior similar to that of “strange dogs and moles”. The father is torn between having full custody of his daughter or choosing to give it up in to order to “appease another” which refers to the mother (section 3). The third poem was written early during the separation and it begins with describing a perfect image of a family where the parents are holding the hand of their child and swinging him over a puddle, both lifting him up as he jumps. But once they get over the puddle, they “stiffen and pull apart”. Snodgrass ends …show more content…
Although Snodgrass defines himself as the “absentee bread-winner” (Section 8) he also insists that he is the daughter’s “real mother” (Section 3). The concept of “home” for Snodgrass is associated with the emotional attachment he has towards the family. But he feels like he failed at keeping up with two families and having a “home” for both families. Snodgrass says in an interview with Hilary Holladay that he wrote Heart’s Needle “at least partly in the hope that the child would eventually see them, which indeed she did. She only told me within the last month that yes, she had read those poems again and again when she was a child. It did indeed show her that I cared a great deal about what happened to her.” (Snodgrass – Original Confessional Poet Tells All) This is the path Snodgrass took in hopes to find peace with his daughter and earn her love. He also says “Here was this baby that I really cared about and that my wife did not seem to like very well, until she found out that she could use it as a weapon against me in the divorce. And then she got very interested in the child.” Which may be the reason why he declared himself as the child’s “real