After demobilization in 1946, Snodgrass transferred to the University of Iowa and enrolled in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, originally intending to become a playwright but eventually joining the poetry workshop[1] which was attracting as teachers some of the finest poetic talents of the day, among them John Berryman, Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell.

He had a long and distinguished academic career, having taught at Cornell (1955-57), Rochester (1957-58), Wayne State (1959–68), Syracuse (1968-77), Old Dominion (1978-79), and the University of Delaware.

He died in his home in Madison County, New York, aged 83, following a four-month battle with lung cancer,[3] and was survived by his fourth wife, writer Kathleen Snodgrass.

In 1957, five sections from a sequence entitled "Heart's Needle" were included in Hall, Pack and Simpson's anthology, New Poets of England and America.

[citation needed] The label of confessional poet affected his work and its reception (he was perceived by some to have "wrecked his career" [4]).

[5] Snodgrass satirized his former confessional style in a series of poems written in response to DeLoss McGraw's surrealistic paintings, a collaboration that eventually grew into a partnership.