My dad, Laurence Snydal, has been writing poetry for as long as I can remember. He covers a wide range of themes, from his childhood in North Dakota, to the inner worlds of the characters of Moby Dick, to the profoundly detailed paintings of Bruegel, to cleaning up after chopping onions in the kitchen. He never writes free verse; his poems always adhere to the pulse of iambic pentameter and the rhyme scheme of sonnets. He takes his craft seriously, and I wanted to honor his collection of poems with an equally well-crafted web experience.

I spent many afternoons in his living room with my Zoom digital recorder, listening to him recite his poems. He reads his poems passionately and doesn’t hold back. He shares so much of himself when he reads, and the experience of his poetry is entirely different when you hear his voice. I hope this website will be a legacy of his poetry and allow others to hear his poetic voice.

This is an ongoing project, and I will continue to record my dad reciting his poems for the foreseeable future.