“Ut pictura poesis”: Intermedial Renewal of the Self in W.D.’s Midnight Carnival
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| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Although W. D. Snodgrass is primarily associated with the rise of confessional poetry, his later work resists being bound by that legacy. Critics have often dismissed his post-confessional writings as “anomalies” or “misdirections,” yet these works reveal a sustained effort at artistic renewal. This paper examines the collection W.D.’s Midnight Carnival (1988), Snodgrass’s collaborative project with painter DeLoss McGraw, as a site where the poet undertakes a deliberate revival of his poetic self by revisiting and reclaiming the “old” aspects of his early identity and reframing them through experimentation. Drawing on Claes Oldenburg’s notion of a “theater of vision,” this paper argues that the coordinated interplay of poems and paintings produces a performative mode of self-reclamation, one that reimagines the boundaries between persona, autobiography, and visual aesthetics. Within McGraw’s surreal, carnivalesque canvases, Snodgrass revisits, reworks, and revitalizes his poetic identity, transforming earlier autobiographical impulses into layered personae through new narrative voices, shifting perspectives, and ironic self-portraiture. The collection thus stages a deliberate renaissance of creative identity and demonstrates how inter-artistic collaboration and dialogue can reanimate established poetic modes, renew artistic vigor, and expand the expressive capacities of each medium. By situating W. D.’s Midnight Carnival within ongoing discussions of revival, multimodality, and cultural re-engagement, this paper highlights Snodgrass’s contribution to broader cultural patterns of creative (self-)reinvention. |
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