Poems For Winter
This selection of words in verse is an invitation to contemplate the nature of this season. My discussions are intended to suggest possibilities for interpretation.You make yours. Let the words pick you up and carry you away to the landscape of these seven poems. Find the flow of winter energy in these words. I hope they give you some pleasure and also food for thought during this time of rest.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
This well known poem is written in classic iambic tetrameter in A / A / B / A style, with the first line of each stanza rhyming with the third line of the one previous – e.g. “queer” and “here” – it’s a pleasing structure that flows easily through the stanzas. The words are simple and evocative of a peaceful feeling. And yet the first half of the poem has a sense of trespass into a frozen land of stillness and darkness. Next comes a gentle wind with floating snow that revels an alluring world beyond the harness of society. Then finally a sense of tension between responsible duty and the urge for mystery that ends in profound awareness of the promise of life and the sleep of death. In this beloved and beautiful poem, the man and his little companion have made an epic journey of insight, acceptance and finally a joy that is “lovely, dark and deep”.
Spellbound
by Emily Brontë
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
This 19th century poet uses repetition and alliteration to describe a situation that has most often been interpreted as hopeless, constrained and desperate. But is it? The first two stanzas paint a picture of increasing darkness and impending violence. The forces of nature are a tyrant that has complete control over the poem’s speaker. “The wild winds coldly blow” sends an entirely different message than Frost’s “easy wind and downy flake”. The first two thirds of Bronte’s poem tell us that nature is malevolent; it’s something we should fear. Then suddenly, in the final stanza, the speaker has a lofty vision of the world. She now sees the limitless sky above the clouds and is soaring over the wastes of the world. She is enchanted with the power of nature and chooses to stay with the storm, to ride it out and to absorb this primordial energy of the world. This poem is about the tension between fate and free will.
Snow Day
by Billy Collins
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling snow.
In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.
But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news
that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—
the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.
Collins is perhaps the most popular poet in America today and this delightful poem shows why. He was the 2001 – 2003 poet laureate of the US. He is famous for conversational, witty poems that are often humorous but also quirky and tender with profound observations of everyday life. The reader can’t help but cheer on the listing of the children’s school names (I love “Peas and Carrots Day School”). This poem also speaks of being contained by stormy weather but with a tone of acceptance, of being “a willing prisoner” who chooses to listen to the radio while drinking tea. The reader is charmed by his descriptions of the children in their nests and bright clothing and gamboling about the playground. And then the obvious gives way to the hidden; now the speaker is “listening hard in the grandiose silence of the snow”. There’s a mystery there. Suddenly the reader sees that the poet has been talking about conflict: “revolution”, “white flag”, “the world fallen”, ”plotting”, “riot”. The winter storm has transformed the normal world; we are shown what’s happening beyond the playfulness of a day off. And while Collins maintains a sense of mirth he brings an appreciation of the mystery, “whispering by the fence”, and even danger, that can happen on a winter’s day.
Dust of Snow
by Robert Frost
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
The poem presents a scene of visual beauty, black etched against white, the movement of the scattered snow contrasted against the immobility of the evergreen tree. The action of the crow presents a bit of life and animation in a scene otherwise frozen and without signs of life. This agency, the scattering of the snow on the speaker, suggests the crow’s intelligence and will. The jocular tone of the poem tells us that even when we are in a state of regret or lament a fortuitous interaction with the natural world can lighten our mood. This small rhymic scene is about the healing power of nature. The poem has a lightness to it, like a dusting of snow.
The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun;
And not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener
Who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there
And the nothing that is.
This is one of my favorite poems. It says so much. Many readers for many years have contemplated what this revered poet is saying. He uses alliteration, enjambment, internal rhyme and other literary devices to create a vast world in a single long sentence. In the beginning, the poet tells us that the natural world is intelligent and to understand it we “must have a mind of winter”. Then he uses our primary sensory perceptions of sight and sound to describe a wintry scene. He encourages us to appreciate the pure wonder of nature with words like “regard” and “behold”. It’s a beautiful world of frost, shagged ice and glittering sunlight; it’s also cold which we tend to avoid. But the third stanza is a turning point. The poet tells us “not to think/of any misery”. We should not layer our own feelings and imagination onto the bare presence of the world if we are to truly appreciate it, to understand it. The wind does not itself carry any meaning; it’s only air moving across the world. If we can refrain from adding qualities of good or bad we can become an integral part of the landscape. The final stanza uses the word “nothing” three times. This has alarmed some readers who interpret it as nihilistic and meaningless. But when Stevens describes the snowman as “nothing himself” he means that the listener has dropped personal identity and is now able to perceive the pure essence of the world without filters. Nothing escapes his perception and he is aware that “a mind of winter” allows him to know the world beyond his sensory limitations, beyond cultural constraints, and before his subjective imagination gets in the way. This is a magnificent poem about pure awareness.
Winter solitude
by Bashō
Winter solitude—
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.
Bashō, Japan’s most famous haiku master, gives us an insightful short piece that paints a peaceful yet penetrating image of the season. It highlights two of our most crucial sensory perceptions: vision and hearing (as does The Snow Man). But here there is no color and we are beyond vision, experience has been honed to only hearing. The poem is an echo of “The Snow Man”. In true haiku fashion, it’s a restating of Steven’s theme with the barest of words. Now there is no need for imagination, no need for naming, no desire for anything more than the comfortable presence of solitude. Very beautiful.
Winter Qigong
by Ron Davis
Boundless clouds of light
penetrate bone marrow,
the depth of dark energy made bright
by body, breath and mind.
The practice of qigong can be a vehicle that carries us into a very deep awareness of what “winter” really is. Within the caverns of the body there are deep resorviors of energy. Winter is the season to access that primordial source of good health with body movement, conscious breathing and mental focus. It’s a time of dark illumination when we look inward to see what really matters most to us, to listen to the wisdom of the wind; to really know that nature is the source of well-being, to feel it in the marrow of our bones.