by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
The first two lines of this poem pose a question many of us may have thought about: how does snow make silence even more silent? And notice Robert Haight’s deft use of color, only those few flecks of red, and the rest of the poem pure white. And silent, so silent. Haight lives in Michigan, where people know about snow.
How Is It That the Snow
How is it that the snow
amplifies the silence,
slathers the black bark on limbs,
heaps along the brush rows?
Some deer have stood on their hind legs
to pull the berries down.
Now they are ghosts along the path,
snow flecked with red wine stains.
This silence in the timbers.
A woodpecker on one of the trees
taps out its story,
stopping now and then in the lapse
of one white moment into another.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1996) by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
I admire the simple profundity of this poem. A kind of puzzle (riddle?) that is posed not with “Why does” or “How does” but with the compounded being-ness of “How is it?” The co-existence of thought and silence, of sound and listener, of presence and absence, of narrative/poetic time and pause/line break, of poet and reader.
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Perhaps this is Michigan’s answer to the winter-mind of Wallace Stevens? (We northeasterners get as much snow as the Great Lakes!)
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It may be possible that the deer (hind) and red wine drops (akin to blood), along with the timber scene, suggest a religious context for this mid-winter season. I’m not at all sure about that, though.
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I like the neutral “a” vowel of these words: that, amplifies, slather, black, tap, lapse. A barely audible sound on the verge of non-sound, of silence.
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Oh, I meant to add a note when this piece posted.
First, we know it is northern hemisphere-centric to post a snow poem in December. We’re sorry to all our southern hemisphere members for that. Maybe we will share a sun poem next week to balance things out.
Second, like Therese, please feel free to talk about what makes this poem work, if you feel it does. Snow is something that’s hard to talk about precisely because it’s talked about (and written about) so much. How does this poem approach snow in a fresh way?
I lived in Alaska for eleven years and Upper Michigan (Da U.P.!) for six, and I love poems about the sensory experience of snow. I really miss how still and quiet the snow makes everything. It’s a very calming feeling.
In this poem, I like how each image is crafted to describe just one simple thing that happens: Snow slathers the tree limbs, a deer eats berries and flees into the forest, a woodpecker makes his tapping sounds, then stops to let the quiet echo. Everything keeps returning to the silence. It’s very simple, but in my senses at least, a very accurate description of what it feels like to stand in a forest after a fresh, heavy snowfall. Whenever I needed to get away as a little kid, I use to bundle up in my snowsuit,head straight for the woods, dig out a little snow seat and just sit there, listening. So lovely. God, I really miss that feeling.