Need Help Analyzing a Poem

[Filththenwah]

I have this poem to study for class and could use others insight to help further analyze it.

I need to analyze it in terms of how the Author views nature.

The poem is "The Snow Arrive After Long Silence" by Nancy Willard and is as follows

The snow arrives after long silence
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time.
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal,
bears up like sheep before shearing.

The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird!
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house
in order. The hungry deer walk

on the risen loaves of snow.
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust.
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry

and haul it to Hudson.
Now I scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me,
and its body, thinned into petals,
and the still caves where it sleeps
[end]



What I have so far is...
-The author hate the winter because of the word choices have a negative tone such as "nothing, stains and pale" and then he uses the reference of "sheep to be sheared" [First stanza]

- Metaphorically compares mother nature's winter side to a woman having "the cool cheek it offers me"

- I feel that the subject/speaker of the poem feels as if nature is cruel and change abruptly since the seasons of the Earth have order. This can be seen because he feels sorry for the wildlife that has to deal with winter "The hungry deer walk on the risen loaves of snow. You can follow the broken hearts their hooves punch in its crust."

- From the first stanza "from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time." I think this means that the author views nature as an ongoing cycle

- I think the last line "the still caves where it sleeps" refers to graves, but I don't know how to relate it to nature

Thank you for any other additional insight.

[OrphanPip]

-The author hate the winter because of the word choices have a negative tone such as "nothing, stains and pale" and then he uses the reference of "sheep to be sheared" [First stanza]

I'm not so sure about this observation, seems strained. Your comments on the opening line below seems more on tract.



- Metaphorically compares mother nature's winter side to a woman having "the cool cheek it offers me"

Maybe, but there's also a play on words here. You're right about there being a sentiment of personifying the snow as being inconsiderate, but there's also the literal fact that the cold will give you a cool cheek.



- I feel that the subject/speaker of the poem feels as if nature is cruel and change abruptly since the seasons of the Earth have order. This can be seen because he feels sorry for the wildlife that has to deal with winter "The hungry deer walk on the risen loaves of snow. You can follow the broken hearts their hooves punch in its crust."

Do you think it's really cruel though? Think more about how the snow is described, the process of snowing is described in domestic terms, and then the snow on the ground is compared to bread and dirty laundry. What do you think that could mean? Do you think it's meaningful that the "natural" is being described in very unnatural terms?



- From the first stanza "from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time." I think this means that the author views nature as an ongoing cycle

I think you're on track here, but not so much about it being a cycle. How about constant or unchanging, and then what does that tell us about the speakers attitude to the snow in the rest of the poem. Why she gives us that indirect look into the thoughts of the cat looking through the window? How does a house cat function as a symbol of both human domesticity and the natural? I think there might be something in the way the stanza starts with the house cat and ends with the hungry dear as well.



- I think the last line "the still caves where it sleeps" refers to graves, but I don't know how to relate it to nature

Not sure, but don't try to think about what each individual line says about nature on its own, but how does it relate to what else is said in the poem.



Thank you for any other additional insight.

Starting with your insight into what that opening line says about snow, and snow as a stand in for nature, and how its cyclical or unchanging. What does the rest of the poem say about that? What is the speaker doing at the beginning and the end of the poem?