WASHINGTON — W.D. Snodgrass, a founding figure of the “confessional” school of poetry, whose tightly controlled autobiographical verse exerted a powerful influence on other writers, died Tuesday of lung cancer at his farmhouse near Erieville, N.Y. He was 83.

Snodgrass found early success, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his first book of poetry, “Heart’s Needle,” which appeared in 1959. In the deeply intimate poems, he explored his experiences in the military and his separation from his daughter because of a divorce.

The volume contained his most famous line — “Snodgrass is walking through the universe.”