W.D. Snodgrass, a Beaver Falls native, burst upon the American poetry scene like a comet in 1960 when his collection, "Heart's Needle," won the Pulitzer Prize and created a large following for his work.

"Nothing he published later equaled the readership of that book," said fellow poet Ed Ochester. "It was so sensational -- poems that were both readable and formalist at the same time. It remains one of the finest books of 20th-century American poetry."

William DeWitt Snodgrass, 83, died Tuesday in his home near Syracuse, N.Y., in the company of his wife, Kathy, after a four-month battle with lung cancer.

Nicknamed "De," Mr. Snodgrass wrote more than 30 poetry collections and translations as well as a 1999 memoir of his life in Beaver Falls, growing up in a house across the street from Geneva College.

In "After Images: Autobiographical Sketches"(BOA Editions), he described his town:

". . . you were horizoned by the distant clamor of mills and foundries. We never heard this though, unless there was a strike and it stopped."

Mr. Snodgrass worked in those mills and briefly attended Geneva College where the strait-laced attitude of the Presbyterian school made him uncomfortable.

After serving in the Navy in World War II, he enrolled in the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa.

After 10 years at Iowa earning several degrees but not a doctorate, he was ousted. "I was the only graduate student with tenure," Mr. Snodgrass joked at his last reading in Pittsburgh in 2005 at Pitt.

"I can't recognize either Wilkinsburg or Beaver Falls anymore," he said then. "I tried to find the mill where I worked with thousands of guys, a huge place, and I couldn't."

He had earlier read here at the International Poetry Forum in 1970.

His years at Iowa proved invaluable as he studied with such poetry greats as Robert Lowell, Karl Shapiro and Randall Jarrell.

Although "Heart's Needle" brought him the label of "confessional poet," he resisted the name and worked to develop his own style.

Yet he is still viewed as "the last of the great confessional poets. With his death, a chapter closes," said Donald W. Faulkner, director of the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY Albany, a friend of the poet and a Pittsburgh native. "We've lost another Pittsburgh writer."

Mr. Faulkner said the poet wrote about "the Pittsburgh of the interior, not the Carl Sandburg view of Chicago. For De, the corridors of his interior were still part of the Pittsburgh architecture."

Michael Sims, poet and founder of Autumn House Press, a Pittsburgh-based publisher, praised Mr. Snodgrass. "He revolutionized American poetry. He personalized the American lyric the way it was never done before. He was able to write about the personal details of his life with an elegant sense of the craft."

Along with Mr. Lowell, Mr. Snodgrass started the confessional school of poetry, said the publisher. "He never liked that term, but influenced others like Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Galway Kinnell and James Wright.

"There's not a single person in poetry who hasn't been influenced by Snodgrass, either following his work or in reaction to it," Mr. Sims said.

" 'Heart's Needle' was a very important book in many ways, but I would never call W.D. a "confessional poet," writes Sam Hamill, founder of Copper Canyon Press and an established poet. "I think a look at the book shows him to be more of a testimonial poet in 'Heart's Needle.' It remains my favorite of all his books. But his scholarship was also important to many of us."

"Heart's Needle" was published when Mr. Snodgrass was teaching at Cornell University, but he was fired "for not being academic enough, I think," said Mr. Ochester, who is editor of the Pitt Poetry Series at the University of Pittsburgh Press.

The poet then led a peripatetic academic life, serving on the faculty of several universities. He was Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing and Contemporary Poetry at the University of Delaware from 1979 until his retirement in 1994.

While Mr. Snodgrass never equaled the success of "Heart's Needle," a 1977 work brought him notoriety and a few protesters at poetry readings.

"The Fuehrer Bunker" was a collection of 20 monologues by reviled Nazi figures during the final days of the Hitler regime.

"Call it 'projectional confessionalism,' " said Mr. Faulkner. "De took up Hitler as a human being, so it was understandable that people would react in pain. It was courageous and risk-taking, but it cost him his reputation. He became classified as 'odd.'I think he was confused by the reaction."

"It was BOA's very first book," said Peter Conners, a BOA editor, "and yes, it did cause a brouhaha. Readers didn't understand that he was writing in the persona of these people."

Gradually Mr. Snodgrass faded from the poetry scene as it grew larger and more diverse.

"De kind of got lost in the world of modern poetry with its turns and fads," Mr. Faulkner said.

"He is not terribly well-known among younger poets today," said Mr. Ochester. "And he was never a self-promoter, but always a quiet guy."

BOA published Mr. Snodgrass' final book in 2006, "Not For Specialists: New and Selected Poems," that was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle's 2007 poetry prize.

He continued to work on new poems and maintained a busy schedule of readings until he became ill four months ago, said former student and friend Bill Patrick, a writer in Troy, N.Y.

"De was writing right up until the time he went into hospice," Mr. Patrick said, adding that his final public reading was at the Syracuse YMCA in the fall.

Along with his widow, Mr. Snodgrass is survived by a daughter, Cynthia Snodgrass of Connecticut; a son, Russell of New Mexico; sister Shirley Schiemer of Patterson Heights, Beaver County, and brother Richard of Mount Washington.

There were no funeral services.

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Jan. 16, 2009) Poet W.D. Snodgrass, who died Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009, requested that no funeral be held for him. This obituary as originally published Jan. 15, 2009 incorrectly said funeral information was unavailable.