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.
The Snow Man Analysis:
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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now in praise of Wallace Stevens. The American poet passed away 50 years ago this year. Commentator
and linguist Jay Keyser saves his highest praise for one of Stevens' poems.
JAY KEYSER:
With something as personal as a poem, it's risky making hard and fast judgments. That won't stop me. I
declare that Wallace Stevens wrote the best short poem in the English language, bar none, and in a minute
I'll tell you why. But first, listen to the poem. It's called "The Snow Man."
(Reading) `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 juniper 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.'
Why is this poem so good? Unlike any other English poem I've read, "The Snow Man" marries what it's
about with the way it's built. If you were to parse it the way I was taught in high school, diagraming all
those clauses and phrases on those slanted lines, you would come up with a perfectly balanced mobile built
around the conjunction `and.' That's the trick of the poem. Each clause seems to be coming to an end and
then suddenly up pops another `and.'
It begins `One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees crusted with
snow.' Fine, that looks like the end of the first sentence. But, no, it goes on impelled by `and.' `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 juniper shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the
January sun.' There, we're finished with the `ands.' Think again. The very next word in the poem is another
pesky `and.' Stevens is forcing his readers to reanalyze what they have just read again and again and again.
I once put all the words of the poem on little white cards and made a mobile out of it. It dangled, perfectly
balanced, like an Alexander Calder creation. The poem, twisting and turning when I blew on it, became the
visual counterpart of what it's about.
But what is it about? The poem is a recipe for seeing things as they really are. To do that, you must see the
world the way the snow man does. The snow man is free of human biases. He knows that in winter the days
aren't cold and miserable; you are. To see like him, you must constantly challenge your own assumptions.
It's one thing to say that in words. It's quite another to say it in the structure the words hang on. No one did
it before. No one has done it since. You can measure great jugglers by how many balls they keep in the air.
It's the same thing with poets.
Do you ever wonder how much of your world is real and how much of it is just a projection of your
interpretation? Sure, we all know drama queens who thrive on drama of their own creation, but I mean all
of us, even the least confrontational.
Is it possible to regard anything the way it actually is? For example, what do you see when you see a tree?
Do you see a factual tree? Don’t we have to see it through the lens of our human experience? Do our
aesthetics tell us that it is “pretty” or “ugly”? Do our experiences define the tree? We think of time spent in
them or near them? Do we think of the passing seasons, perhaps? Do we look at trees in full bloom and feel
in full bloom ourselves? Or maybe our personal beliefs help us define the tree? Our connotations are
impossible to peel off the denotations of things.
However you define a tree, it is probably not an objective tree, it is only your interpretation of the tree; it is
a tree as defined by your human drama.
We create and recreate things in our world to make our lives more understandable or more palatable. This
is just the way we are. No one is saying it is good or bad.
It just is, like the tree just is.
Wallace Stevens’ short, but mind-blowingly dense poem “The Snow Man” explores some of these ideas.
This poem is one sentence divided up into a series of tercets, or three-lined stanzas. It is the type of poem
that you have to read over and reinterpret several times before any meaning can be extracted. I loved this
poem well before I understood it, and I am still not sure that I fully understand it, but for me, it is the mark
of excellent poetry when the words echo through your mind and haunt you till you make some sort of sense
of them. Then, upon a later reading, you find a different (or other layer of) meaning. Maybe this is because
you are a different person each time you reread it.
“One must have the mind of winter. . .”
What does that mean? At first, I read it as metaphor. Maybe a cold, stark mind? An unemotional mind? A
barren mind? A mind with no imagination?
But if you look at the title, we are reminded that it may be literal, it is the mind of the snow man, and that
seems to make sense to me, since themes point to what is real versus what is imagined. I am projecting
myself into any other interpretation, right? If I read this as an unimaginative mind, for example, am I not
saying that winter is a time when there is a lack of life?
That is not winter, that is my projection of winter.
One must have a snowman’s mind to see this winter scene and “not to think of any misery in the sound of
the wind. . .”
The wind is not miserable, instead, we are miserable in the wind. One must have the snowman’s mind to
think of the wind as only wind—not to consider the wind good or bad. The wind is just the wind.
“For the listener, who listens in the snow”
Who is the listener? The snowman? The reader? It is the same “one” that we identified with from the first
word of the first stanza.
English: Snowman on frozen Lake Saimaa, Puumala, Finland Suomi: Lumiukko jäätyneellä Saimaalla
Puumalassa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
;
“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself. . .”
At this point of the poem, whoever you interpret to be the listener has ceased projecting himself into his
world. He is “nothing himself”
By doing this, he is able to see the world around him as it actually is. He “beholds nothing that is not there”
And by not reading anything of himself into the world, he sees that there is nothing there.
So, when we stop creating our own worlds, the world has no meaning. In fact, when the listener is able to
view things completely factually as a snowman does, completely objectively, the poem is over. It is all
over.
Again, it is interesting to note that there is no judgment here. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that we create
our own worlds? For Stevens, that is not important. It just is.
“I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam?” Maybe.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
;
;
"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens is a poem which creates a unique dramatic situation through an
effective imagery, and which compels the reader to employ another way of thinking in order to both
understand the poem and realize its very theme.
The first thing that is noticeable about the poem is that it is actually just one long, complex sentence. There
is no rhyme, and there is no particular meter. Each foot varies: the poem becomes a combination of iambs
("the frost," "and not," "the sound," "that is"), trochees ("winter," "glitter,"), anapests ("to regard," "to
behold," "of the land"), dactyls ("junipers"), and others that are not of those kind ("that is blowing" unstressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed). Also, each line has either 3 or 4 feet, and the variation per
stanza is not even regular.
This very structure actualizes the opening line of the poem, which calls for "one [to] have the mind of
winter."
English: Alexander Blok's poem 'Noch, ulica, fonar...
January 6
January 4
The title suggests that this is actually the mind of "the snow man." By reading and reciting the poem, one
gets the sense of assuming another mind whose thoughts are the contained in the rest of the poem. The
poem's structure allows this by imitating the normal way of thought, which normally does not come in
complete sentences, nor in rhymes or regular rhythm. Instead, mind activity is usually a "stream of
consciousness," a continuous and an uninterrupted flow of thought. Thus, the structure is appropriate for
the poem, and its theme - that of leaving behind one's own mind and assuming another's - is revealed.
One question that may arise with this function of the structure is this: if the poem really was meant to
imitate the mind's flow of thought, then why did the poet not write the poem in just one long line instead of
dividing it into five tercets of three lines each? The answer to this is another function of the structure,
which is creating the poem's mood and tone. The dramatic situation is set on a cold and quiet winter day,
with very little movement in the surroundings. The poem itself should be the same - gentle and unhurried,
almost poignant - and it does achieve this through the necessary pauses after lines and stanzas.
Other parts in which the poem is given this mood and tone include the fourth line of the poem. Actually,
this line acts as a supplement for the first line, as having "the mind of winter" is linked to "[being] cold a
long time." It being placed here instead of being situated immediately after the first line provides a further
"slowing down" of the poem itself. Moreover, the use of one-syllable stressed words, as well as the use of
assonance with the long "o" sound ("cold...long"), makes the flow of the poem slower, also reinforcing the
very idea of the "long time." The same idea of one-syllable stressed words and assonance is true for the last
words of the third and fourth stanza: "few leaves," and "same bare place," respectively.
The support for the established theme, mood, and tone, is found in the subsequent lines, which can be taken
as reasons for what the first line declares. It is seen that these lines could be divided into two groups which
focus on different things: the first group includes the second, third, fifth, sixth, and the first half of the
seventh line ("Of the January sun"), and the second group includes the second half of the eighth line ("in
the sound of the wind") until thirteenth line ("For the listener, who listens in the snow").
First, the former evidently appeal to the reader's sense of sight. These lines contain little details about the
landscape that are described in such a way as to evoke a clear image in the mind of the reader, who sees
"the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow," "the junipers shagged with ice," "the spruces
rough in the distant glitter of the January sun." The words are very particular, achieving nuances which
contribute to the vividness of the picture being conceived. For instance, the word "crusted" is used instead
of "covered," suggesting not only what covers it, but also the snow's firmness and roughness. Similarly, this
quality of snow is depicted in the word "shagged" - a word commonly associated with coarseness - and
directly stated with the word "rough." Additionally, it becomes obvious that the lines contain a lot of the "r"
sound, as in "regard," "frost," "pine-trees," "crusted," "junipers," spruces," "rough," "glitter," and "January."
The rolling, resonant sound of the "r" again contributes to the vividness of the description.
One particular image contained in these lines is that of the "distant glitter" (of the January sun). In this, the
poem uses sound of the short "i" in an assonance to support this idea of something so distant that it is
almost not there. The enjambment and the separation of the phrase "of the January sun" into another stanza,
also relates this idea of distance.
The second group contains multiple instances of the word "sound," as well as the words "listener" and
"listen." And there also is the prevailing sibilant sound of "s" - "misery," "sound," "leaves," "same,"
"listener," "listens," and "snow" - which mimics the hissing "sound of the wind...that is blowing in the same
bare place." It is clear, therefore, that these lines aim to appeal to the reader's sense of hearing.
What this grouping achieves is the recognition of the process that "one" goes through in leaving behind his
own mind and assuming another's mind, in this case that of "the snow man." He is able to view the world
through different eyes, and thus is able to see the vivid little details of the scene, which he would not
normally see. But it does not end there. It is common knowledge that the absence of one sense contributes
to the acuteness of another. In this instance, it could be imagined that "one" closes his eyes - or gives up his
sense of sight - and tries listening instead of looking, and so he is able to hear the normally soft, quiet
"sound the wind...the sound of a few leaves."
A part which was excluded from the two groups is the phrase "and not to think / of any misery." The word
"think" is emphasized because it comes at the end of the line (an enjambment, too), and because of the
explosive sound of "k." The presence of the stressed word "not" calls again to the idea of assuming another
mind, "not to think" in one's own way of thought. Furthermore, it calls for one to do away not only with
thoughts, but also with feelings - "of any misery."
Another aspect of this process "one" goes through is the movement from something particular and small to
something more vague and vast. The "boughs of pine-trees," "the junipers," and "the spruces" disappear to
become "the same bare place," and "the sound of a few leaves" becomes "the sound of the land."
And so it is seen that assuming another's mind is essentially disregarding one's self. There is first a need to
calm and slow down one's self, as the poem's mood and tone suggest; then there is a removal of one's
personal thought and feelings, a reduction of one's senses from sight to hearing, and a loss of one's
distinctiveness. And, since the mind being assumed is that of a lifeless snow man, "one" would ultimately
become nothing, as stated in the 14th line - "And, nothing himself..." (This idea of "being nothing" is,
ironically, stressed by putting the phrase, "nothing himself" in the middle of the line instead of at the
beginning or end.)
But one's being "nothing" is not necessarily a bad thing. The 14th line ends with the word "beholds" - a
verb which connotes something that is majestic and astounding, referred to in the last line: "Nothing that is
not there and the nothing that is." Since this line is the longest in the poem, and the use of the fricative "th"
gives it an echoing sound, this line is very much emphasized, appropriate since it is the concluding line of
the poem.
To "behold nothing that is not there" means not to behold whatever is not there, or else to behold only what
is there. To "behold...the nothing that is" creates a paradox, as the "nothing" becomes "something" "that is,"
and brings to mind the oft-repeated phrase, "presence of an absence." But the combination of these justifies
the use of the word "behold," for it is truly majestic to "see" both what is there and what is not there. And
so finally, this last line gives a satisfying conclusion to the poem, as it is the ultimate reward for all "one"
has to go through, for giving up one's self, for "[having] the mind of winter."