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Snowfall: Via Negativa
“Less is more.” —Literary Dictum
Out on the highway, snow settles in place
Covering the tracks the traffic has traced
Blotting out edges, disguising the rough
Burying the world in heaps of white stuff
Obscuring the details of branches rimmed white
With down-drifting flakes that fill up the night
Immaculate, empty—winter forlorn
Clears out a space where beauty is born
So, poets, in language, clear out a space
In parsing out lines, they strive to erase
Removing distinctions too sharply defined
Cloaking in symbols what clutters the mind
Subtracting, not adding, more from the world
As a ribbon of metaphor slowly unfurls
Til the page, like landscape, briefly transfigured
Is buried in beauty, sweetly disfigured.
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Louis Groarke is a professor in the Philosphy Department of St. Francis Xavier University, in Canada. He has published short stories and poems in various literary venues but is a philosopher by trade. He recently published a book on literary criticism Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). In effect, it provides a traditional response to post-modernism.
A sweet comparison.
Keep writing!
Paddy
Thank you so much, Paddy; writing good poetry is hard but I will keep trying.
Louis, your poem on snowfall is a welcome reprieve from the heat dome that has been over Texas for two weeks. Those are great lines with memorable quotes in beautiful couplets! I really love this poem!
Thanks Roy, as you point out, maybe writing poems about winter in the summer is another way to stay refreshed. I am in Canada… where is easy to write poems about the loveliness of snow! Best, Lg
Your imagery truly is a relief from the heat, Louis.
I enjoyed the simplicity of the poem which fitted in with the theme and the use of couplets.
I wasn’t sure in line 5 whether you meant ‘rimmed’ or ‘rimed’, but then I’m a fan of archaic words like ‘rime’ and ‘hoary’.
Thanks for the read.
Paul, That is a great suggestion. I thought that “rimmed” worked a bit better because it seems to me it is a longer sound and I had thought of branches holding onto a layer of snow. But “rimed” as in covered with frost could work nicely as well. Then the snow would be falling on top of the earlier frost and the ice-covered branches. So there is something to be said for that slight adjustment. Let me think about it. I too like archaic words and phrases–I think they can be used to great effect–they add a tone and a specific voice to a poem by placing it in a tradition. (A good thing, I think!) Thanks for the comments. Lg
“Cloaking in symbols what clutters the mind.” What a lovely description of the beautifying potential of poetry!
And the illustration, with what appears to be a castle in the mist along with trees, is most appropriate.
Yes, Margaret, They seem to be very good at pictures. I think the art and poetry connection is a winner. Both ways of somehow grappling with the aesthetic side of life. Thanks for the comment, Lg
You understand the meaning of a symbol. I enjoyed this poem. Please show us more.
Thank you, Sally. I have more poems–finished, half-finished, just begun, but like most of us, I write slowly. To get it just right can take several years. I appreciate the encouragement, Lg
I’m wondering if “Cloaking in symbols what clutters the mind” is what we do when our thoughts tumble – too many and too fast to search out the individual meanings when a poem wants to be written before we know what it’s trying to say or what we want to say.
The irony of the ending made me smile.
Mary, I like your way of putting it: “when a poem wants to be written.” Yes, it takes awhile to understand what we are trying to say; it is as if it is bigger than us and we have to be humble and the instrument so it can work its way through us. I wanted to propose poetry (and beauty) as a subtractive experience–somehow emptying out and (paradoxically) filling up with meaning. Snow does, in a sense, SWEETLY disfigure, i.e., readjust in a good way. So can poetry; that is the art of it. Thanks for the comment, Lg