The beauty of The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle by W.D. Snodgrass lies in the crafting. Otherwise, the word beauty does not lend itself to this monumental work, for in it Snodgrass presents an evil so pervasive among a particular group of people that it is sometimes difficult to take in too much of the poetry at one time. And so with no relief, no Dantesque quest for virtue, Snodgrass builds a structure of solid evil, poem by poem, layer by layer, and in the process of building, he tears down the Third Reich and the people who made it happen.

Rhyme, meter, and music--and the poetic rhythms that result from these--as well as song itself, permeate the work. Song, in ...