Twenty poems: 20 Nazi monologues (Hitler, Speer, Goebbels, Eva Braun, Martin Bormann, et al.) presumed to have been spoken "1 April-1 May, 1945." It doesn't work, for the reason Mr. Snodgrass himself pinpoints: "A reader unfamiliar with history of World War II may find many details in these poems outrageous, chilly, monstrous, downright incredible." And "Eva Braun's favorite song was 'Tea for Two.'"

The facts are everywhere so bizarre there is little for a poet to invent…. This is "A Cycle of Poems in Progress," meaning there will be more; and why Snodgrass should be wasting his gift on attempts to outdo "the banality of evil" I can't begin to guess, any more than he can guess what really went or ought to have gone through those minds, that month…. Those deaths, in that bunker, were self-conscious bad art—perhaps the one thing poetry can't transcend.

Hugh Kenner, "Three Poets...