Clifton Snider
Encyclopedia
Clifton Mark Snider is an American poet, novelist, literary critic, scholar, and educator. He has a B.A. and an M.A. from California State University, Long Beach, and a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. He has taught at various institutions of higher education in southern California, primarily at Long Beach City College and at California State University, Long Beach.
, on March 3, 1947, the second of five sons. His father, Allan G. Snider, was a minister with the Assemblies of God
denomination. His mother, Rhoda M. Tout, had traveled as an evangelist with Olga Olsson before her marriage to Allan Snider. Because the father was a minister, the family moved frequently. By the age of twelve, Snider had lived in Minnesota; Joliet, Illinois; Terre Haute, Indiana; and several cities in southern California.
, where he finished his B.A., graduating with honors in 1969, and his M.A. (1971). He received his Ph.D. in English Literature in 1974 from the University of New Mexico
. Snider's doctoral dissertation is a Jungian analysis of Swinburne
's Tristram of Lyonesse, and he has published numerous articles on Victorian literature, as well as twentieth century English and American literatures. These include introductions to Jungian psychology (or Analytical Psychology
) and criticism, histories of Merlin
in 19th-century British literature, as well as such authors as W. H. Auden
, Emily Dickinson
, Edward Lear
, Carson McCullers
, Algernon Charles Swinburne
, Oscar Wilde
, and Virginia Woolf
. A specialist in Wilde, he has taught his own seminars on him at California State University, Long Beach, and published several articles on Wilde using his primary critical approaches of Jungian and Queer Criticism. He also taught the first course ever on Gays and Lesbians in Literature at Cal State Long Beach. His book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature, contains a chapter on Wilde. His latest article uses Jungian and Queer Criticism to examine Brokeback Mountain
, story and film, and appears in the Jungian journal, Psychological Perspectives, January, 2008.
Snider's shorter pieces of criticism have appeared in many periodicals, among them The Advocate
, the Long Beach Press-Telegram
, and the Los Angeles Times
. In the early 1980s he was a contributing editor for the Maelstrom Review.
In the midst of the presidential election during the fall semester of 2004 at Cal State Long Beach, Snider became involved in a national controversy over academic freedom
when two of his students, a young woman and a young man, went on Fox News to complain about Snider's comments the first night of a freshman composition class. Because his emphasis in a class that is supposed to promote critical thinking about controversial issues was on morality and spirituality, Snider used the war in Iraq as an example of immorality. He invited any student who disagreed to say so, and these two did. A number of others in the class agreed with Snider. Fox News, however, and a number of other right-wing commentators, responding to a complaint by the female student on David Horowitz
's site, Students for Academic Freedom, concentrated on Snider's argument paper topics and his book list for a book review, both of which were perceived as biased (the student said the list had "a dominant theme: Sexual [sic] perversion and anti Bush [sic] rhetoric"). The homophobic drumbeat was picked up by other sites, such as Agape Press.
The hate mail and death threats were such that for a time Snider received police protection while teaching that class ("Attack of the Killer Hipublicans," Whole Life Times). The student became a spokesperson for Horowitz, writing numerous articles for right-wing blogs and other web sites, including Horowitz's online FrontPage Magazine, and appearing again on national television on Paul Gigot
’s The Journal Editorial Report on September 23, 2005, which at that time was on PBS. Not allowed to respond to his former student's accusations on the Gigot program or on its web site, Snider, who had felt constrained by his employer to keep silent, finally told his side of the story on Insidehighered.com. His former student was claiming Snider had been unfair to her by giving her a "B" on a paragraph she wrote on the film Fahrenheit 9/11
when she had been achieving a “straight-A record” in the class. Snider wrote he had "the grade book" for the class which proved she was not telling the truth. Neither she nor Horowitz ever contested what Snider said, and indeed neither she nor the male student ever followed university policy regarding complaints against professors. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/11/retract
Snider's criticism and poetry have been translated into Russian and French, and his poetry, fiction, and criticism have been published around the world in countries as diverse as Algeria, Canada, England, France, Ireland, and the United States. Much of his work concerns the foreign places he's visited, and though his home is Long Beach, California, the spiritual core of his poetry is often centered in New Mexico, with its rich mixture of Native, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures. In New Mexico he has held a number of residence grants at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos. (Other residence grants he has held have been at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France.) In addition to drawing on his own Christian roots for his work, Snider also draws on a multitude of other religious/spiritual traditions, from Native American to East Indian, African, and Nordic peoples, myths, and legends. Of particular interest are his poems about the paleolithic European caves of Niaux and Pech-Merle. Robert Peters
examines Snider's work in a chapter titled "Poems for an Autobiography" in The Great American Poetry Bake-off (1987).
In 1986 at The Works Gallery, Long Beach, California, Out Theater produced as its premier production Edwin: A Performance Art Event, based on Snider's book, Edwin: A Character in Poems (1984), and his one-act play, A Little Get-Together.
Although, with the exception of Bad Smoke Good Body, Snider's early books focused on characters he invented, fellow Long Beach poet and critic Gerald Locklin maintains in Western American Literature that Snider's fifth book of poems, Blood & Bones (1988), "completes, with the dropping of the 'Jesse' and 'Edwin' personae, [Snider's] transition from modern to postmodern artist. The confidence he now exhibits renders accessible to artistic use a rich though often painful personal history." Of the same book, Richard Labonte writes in the national gay and lesbian magazine, The Advocate
: "Southern California poet Clifton Snider explores the unexpected, the near tragic, and the adventurous. In three sections, he writes of a trip through Europe in the '70s, of his sudden hospitalization with a bleeding ulcer, and of his return to travel in Europe in the mid '80s. Poems of the first trip are soaked with the blood oozing into his guts; poems of the second trip reflect good health, a good eye, and maturity. The contrast is appealing; the poems, beguiling."
Impervious to Piranhas (1989), the chapbook that followed Blood & Bones, collects poems, early and late, which Snider had not found places for in his earlier collections. The Age of the Mother (1992), the full-length book that Snider published next, was praised by Glenn Bach ("In these beautifully spare words, Snider weaves personal mantras of birth, death, and transcendence. He announces the return of the Goddess after centuries of patriarchal dominance," Small Press Review) and Marilyn Johnson ("Out of . . . profound insight and spiritual wisdom he . . . has created an offering, a magnificent poetic vision, a prayer-book for the coming New Age," Pearl).
His collection of poems, The Alchemy of Opposites (2000), has received the greatest praise of Snider's fairly lengthy career. Eva von Kesselhausen, for example, writes in the Small Press Review: "Clifton Snider has been writing and publishing for over 25 years to establish himself as one of American's best . . . contemporary poets. The Alchemy of Opposites . . . stands as his most outstanding book to date . . . [with] poignant poetry which is highly crafted and easy to read." And in the International Gay and Lesbian Review, Arnold T. Schwab declares, "The Alchemy of Opposites is Clifton Snider's . . . best work in verse, his most personal and moving"; Schwab also admires "Snider's emotional directness and the admirable accessibility of his imagery. . . . The Alchemy of Opposites indeed contains outcroppings of pure gold." Two poems from this collection, "Le Mont Saint- Michel" and "Honey from Heaven," won "In the Spotlight" awards from the online magazine, The Poetry Page, in 1999.
Snider published his collection of poems, Aspens in the Wind, in 2009.
A long-time lecturer at Cal State Long Beach, Snider retired in 2009 and is currently collaborating with the independent film company, Iconoclastic Films, on an adaptation of his novel, Loud Whisper. He lives with his longtime partner, Mario Hernandez, and continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism. His full curriculum vitae is available on his own university web site.
Early life
Clifton Snider was born in Duluth, MinnesotaDuluth, Minnesota
Duluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Saint Louis County. The fourth largest city in Minnesota, Duluth had a total population of 86,265 in the 2010 census. Duluth is also the second largest city that is located on Lake Superior after Thunder Bay, Ontario,...
, on March 3, 1947, the second of five sons. His father, Allan G. Snider, was a minister with the Assemblies of God
Assemblies of God
The Assemblies of God , officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is a group of over 140 autonomous but loosely-associated national groupings of churches which together form the world's largest Pentecostal denomination...
denomination. His mother, Rhoda M. Tout, had traveled as an evangelist with Olga Olsson before her marriage to Allan Snider. Because the father was a minister, the family moved frequently. By the age of twelve, Snider had lived in Minnesota; Joliet, Illinois; Terre Haute, Indiana; and several cities in southern California.
Critic and scholar
He went to Southern California College (an Assemblies of God institution now called Vanguard University) on music and academic scholarships. After two years, he transferred to California State University, Long BeachCalifornia State University, Long Beach
California State University, Long Beach is the second largest campus of the California State University system and the third largest university in the state of California by enrollment...
, where he finished his B.A., graduating with honors in 1969, and his M.A. (1971). He received his Ph.D. in English Literature in 1974 from the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
. Snider's doctoral dissertation is a Jungian analysis of Swinburne
Swinburne
Swinburne may refer to:* A place:**Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia**Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus in Kuching, Malaysia**Swinburne Senior Secondary College in Melbourne, Australia...
's Tristram of Lyonesse, and he has published numerous articles on Victorian literature, as well as twentieth century English and American literatures. These include introductions to Jungian psychology (or Analytical Psychology
Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...
) and criticism, histories of Merlin
Merlin
Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in the Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures...
in 19th-century British literature, as well as such authors as W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
, Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
, Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...
, Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
. A specialist in Wilde, he has taught his own seminars on him at California State University, Long Beach, and published several articles on Wilde using his primary critical approaches of Jungian and Queer Criticism. He also taught the first course ever on Gays and Lesbians in Literature at Cal State Long Beach. His book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature, contains a chapter on Wilde. His latest article uses Jungian and Queer Criticism to examine Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. It is a film adaptation of the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx with the screenplay written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry...
, story and film, and appears in the Jungian journal, Psychological Perspectives, January, 2008.
Snider's shorter pieces of criticism have appeared in many periodicals, among them The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
, the Long Beach Press-Telegram
Long Beach Press-Telegram
The Press-Telegram is a daily newspaper published in Long Beach, California. Tracing its history to 1897, it is currently published by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a division of newspaper conglomerate MediaNews Group, which purchased the newspaper from Knight Ridder in 1997; Ridder and Knight...
, and the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. In the early 1980s he was a contributing editor for the Maelstrom Review.
Activism
A political/peace activist, Snider has posted poems on the national web site, Poets Against the War, and maintains his own web page, A Poet Against the War, on which he has posted some of his own poetry. The page includes many news items, photos, and links regarding the war in Iraq, not the least of which are statistics of the dead and wounded and information about the slaughter in Iraq of academics and gay people. He has served as an officer in the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club.In the midst of the presidential election during the fall semester of 2004 at Cal State Long Beach, Snider became involved in a national controversy over academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
when two of his students, a young woman and a young man, went on Fox News to complain about Snider's comments the first night of a freshman composition class. Because his emphasis in a class that is supposed to promote critical thinking about controversial issues was on morality and spirituality, Snider used the war in Iraq as an example of immorality. He invited any student who disagreed to say so, and these two did. A number of others in the class agreed with Snider. Fox News, however, and a number of other right-wing commentators, responding to a complaint by the female student on David Horowitz
David Horowitz
David Joel Horowitz is an American conservative writer and policy advocate. Horowitz was raised by parents who were both members of the American Communist Party. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting Marxism completely...
's site, Students for Academic Freedom, concentrated on Snider's argument paper topics and his book list for a book review, both of which were perceived as biased (the student said the list had "a dominant theme: Sexual [sic] perversion and anti Bush [sic] rhetoric"). The homophobic drumbeat was picked up by other sites, such as Agape Press.
The hate mail and death threats were such that for a time Snider received police protection while teaching that class ("Attack of the Killer Hipublicans," Whole Life Times). The student became a spokesperson for Horowitz, writing numerous articles for right-wing blogs and other web sites, including Horowitz's online FrontPage Magazine, and appearing again on national television on Paul Gigot
Paul Gigot
Paul A. Gigot is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative political commentator and the editor of the editorial pages for The Wall Street Journal...
’s The Journal Editorial Report on September 23, 2005, which at that time was on PBS. Not allowed to respond to his former student's accusations on the Gigot program or on its web site, Snider, who had felt constrained by his employer to keep silent, finally told his side of the story on Insidehighered.com. His former student was claiming Snider had been unfair to her by giving her a "B" on a paragraph she wrote on the film Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 documentary film by American filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the news media...
when she had been achieving a “straight-A record” in the class. Snider wrote he had "the grade book" for the class which proved she was not telling the truth. Neither she nor Horowitz ever contested what Snider said, and indeed neither she nor the male student ever followed university policy regarding complaints against professors. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/11/retract
Career as a poet and critical reception
All of Snider's books of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism have been critically acclaimed. His first chapbook, Jesse Comes Back (1976), was followed by the elegiac Bad Smoke Good Body (1980), written for the poet's older brother, Evan, who had disappeared under circumstances indicating foul play in October 1976. The loss of his older brother, who was gay, as is Snider, has run through Snider's work through the years, culminating in the frankly autobiographical novel, Wrestling with Angels: A Tale of Two Brothers (2001). Indeed, Snider uses each of the twelve poems from Bad Smoke as epigraphs for each of the twelve chapters of the novel.Snider's criticism and poetry have been translated into Russian and French, and his poetry, fiction, and criticism have been published around the world in countries as diverse as Algeria, Canada, England, France, Ireland, and the United States. Much of his work concerns the foreign places he's visited, and though his home is Long Beach, California, the spiritual core of his poetry is often centered in New Mexico, with its rich mixture of Native, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures. In New Mexico he has held a number of residence grants at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos. (Other residence grants he has held have been at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France.) In addition to drawing on his own Christian roots for his work, Snider also draws on a multitude of other religious/spiritual traditions, from Native American to East Indian, African, and Nordic peoples, myths, and legends. Of particular interest are his poems about the paleolithic European caves of Niaux and Pech-Merle. Robert Peters
Robert Peters
Robert Louis Peters is a poet, critic, scholar, playwright, editor, and actor born in an impoverished rural area of northern Wisconsin in 1924. He holds a Ph.D in Victorian literature. His poetry career began in 1967 when his young son Richard died unexpectedly of spinal meningitis...
examines Snider's work in a chapter titled "Poems for an Autobiography" in The Great American Poetry Bake-off (1987).
In 1986 at The Works Gallery, Long Beach, California, Out Theater produced as its premier production Edwin: A Performance Art Event, based on Snider's book, Edwin: A Character in Poems (1984), and his one-act play, A Little Get-Together.
Although, with the exception of Bad Smoke Good Body, Snider's early books focused on characters he invented, fellow Long Beach poet and critic Gerald Locklin maintains in Western American Literature that Snider's fifth book of poems, Blood & Bones (1988), "completes, with the dropping of the 'Jesse' and 'Edwin' personae, [Snider's] transition from modern to postmodern artist. The confidence he now exhibits renders accessible to artistic use a rich though often painful personal history." Of the same book, Richard Labonte writes in the national gay and lesbian magazine, The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
: "Southern California poet Clifton Snider explores the unexpected, the near tragic, and the adventurous. In three sections, he writes of a trip through Europe in the '70s, of his sudden hospitalization with a bleeding ulcer, and of his return to travel in Europe in the mid '80s. Poems of the first trip are soaked with the blood oozing into his guts; poems of the second trip reflect good health, a good eye, and maturity. The contrast is appealing; the poems, beguiling."
Impervious to Piranhas (1989), the chapbook that followed Blood & Bones, collects poems, early and late, which Snider had not found places for in his earlier collections. The Age of the Mother (1992), the full-length book that Snider published next, was praised by Glenn Bach ("In these beautifully spare words, Snider weaves personal mantras of birth, death, and transcendence. He announces the return of the Goddess after centuries of patriarchal dominance," Small Press Review) and Marilyn Johnson ("Out of . . . profound insight and spiritual wisdom he . . . has created an offering, a magnificent poetic vision, a prayer-book for the coming New Age," Pearl).
His collection of poems, The Alchemy of Opposites (2000), has received the greatest praise of Snider's fairly lengthy career. Eva von Kesselhausen, for example, writes in the Small Press Review: "Clifton Snider has been writing and publishing for over 25 years to establish himself as one of American's best . . . contemporary poets. The Alchemy of Opposites . . . stands as his most outstanding book to date . . . [with] poignant poetry which is highly crafted and easy to read." And in the International Gay and Lesbian Review, Arnold T. Schwab declares, "The Alchemy of Opposites is Clifton Snider's . . . best work in verse, his most personal and moving"; Schwab also admires "Snider's emotional directness and the admirable accessibility of his imagery. . . . The Alchemy of Opposites indeed contains outcroppings of pure gold." Two poems from this collection, "Le Mont Saint- Michel" and "Honey from Heaven," won "In the Spotlight" awards from the online magazine, The Poetry Page, in 1999.
Snider published his collection of poems, Aspens in the Wind, in 2009.
Novels
In 2000-2001 Snider published in rapid succession three novels he had written in the 1980s: Loud Whisper, Bare Roots, and Wrestling with Angels: A Tale of Two Brothers. All were well-received by the critics in journals such as the International Gay and Lesbian Review, Sexuality and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, and Chiron Review. The latter two novels are autobiographical stories about the coming of age and coming out of sensitive young men with deep Christian fundamentalist roots. Loud Whisper chronicles the frontman for an 80's rock band who, drunk and drugged out, falls from stage during a concert and becomes paralyzed. As always, Snider is concerned with spiritual decline and revitalization. Through the eyes of the frontman, Adam, his band members, his male and female lovers, and a journalist doing a story on him, Adam's spiritual and physical struggles unfold.A long-time lecturer at Cal State Long Beach, Snider retired in 2009 and is currently collaborating with the independent film company, Iconoclastic Films, on an adaptation of his novel, Loud Whisper. He lives with his longtime partner, Mario Hernandez, and continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism. His full curriculum vitae is available on his own university web site.
Poetry
- Jesse Comes Back (1976)
- Bad Smoke Good Body (1980)
- Jesse and His Son (1982)
- Edwin: A Character in Poems (1984)
- Blood & Bones (1988)
- Impervious to Piranhas (1989)
- The Age of the Mother (1992)
- The Alchemy of Opposites (2000)
- Aspens in the Wind (2009)
Novels
- Loud Whisper (2000)
- Bare Roots (2001)
- Wrestling with Angels: A Tale of Two Brothers (2001)
Literary criticism
- The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature (1991)