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After the Snow
The snow fell through the night, night-long,
The deepest snowfall of the year.
By dawn it covered everything,
Pearl gray unfolding everywhere
As light leaked inward from beyond
Through curtained distances of gauze.
Since there was hardly any wind
Snow-feathers fell straight down in bars,
White, crystalline, and beautiful.
Both beautiful and delicate,
They held the world completely still;
No one was out or ventured out.
At first no prints or tire tracks
Marked here from there; then gradually
The storm died down to drifting flakes,
Some shovelers came out to see
The sky, directionless and gray,
The small sun floating in deep mist,
Diminished, vague, and far away,
The world laid bare and slightly lost.
.
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Steven Frattali worked in the field of mental health and currently lives in Greater Boston. In his former life as an academic, he published two short books: Person, Place and World: A Late Modern Reading of Robert Frost’s Poetry (English Literary Studies, 2002) and Hypodermic Light: Philip Lamantia and the Question of Surrealism (Peter Land, 2003). His book on Elizabeth Bishop is nearing completion along with another on John Wieners.
This is a simple and straightforwards poem of description in unrhymed tetrameters. Note that the poet has three instances of word repetition (“night” in line 1, “beautiful” in lines 9 and 10, “out” in line 12) and close pairs like “everything” and “everywhere” in lines 3 and 4, and “snow fell” and “snowfall” in lines 1 and 2. I think this is deliberate, for it gives the description a plainness and evenness that suggests an overall blanketing of snow. One looks out, and all one sees is white. The words “directionless,” “diminished,” “vague,” and “bare” also suggest the absence of clear visible details that accompanies a snow storm.
I note also (with relief) that the three miseries of “meaning , message, and moral” are missing. The simple, plain description of snowfall is as bare and undecorated as a tree stripped of its leaves in winter. What we get is a purely impressionistic and untroubled picture of a wintry scene. It is almost haiku-like in its reticence.
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for your precise, sensitive analysis of the technique in my piece. I was indeed trying to avoid any obvious type of message when I wrote it. And at that time, the town was almost immobilized with heavy white snow.
Those “curtained distances of gauze” are worthy of Dickinson at her best!
“The deepest snowfall of the year” immediately brings to mine Frost’s line, “The darkest evening of the year” – did you have him at all in mind? If so, kudos!
Dear Jeremiah,
Well first of all, thank you for the tremendous compliment — “Dickinson at her best!” I didn’t realize the similarity myself, but when you mention it, it does reflect her tendency to see natural things in terms of artificial things. And the echo of Frost I also wasn’t conscious of. But I was a big fan and wrote a dissertation on him, so his style must have sunk in. Thanks for reading!
A beautiful night.
Snowfall lying everywhere.
The world laid bare.
I took some of the words Joseph noted and wrote that haiku.
Great stuff, Steven. I’m sitting in the tropics in my shorts and your poem’s imagery made me feel chilly.
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your haiku. And for saying my poem made you feel chilly. I was naturally trying to be evocative. And the town was buried under snow when I wrote it. lol
Steven, your poem is elaborate in the positive sense of being fully worked out in time. The title includes the time word “after,” but the snowfall itself (the “during”) takes up half the poem. We are told of night, dawn, and gradually increasing light. You arrive at the full “after” effect only in the slightly comic last line. An immediate “after” effect comes in the middle, where you repeat “beautiful” and add “delicate” as words of favorable evaluation. Then to speak of what the snow has acted on, you introduce “the world” as “completely still,” even though the “storm” (it hardly seems stormy!) is yet in the process of dying down. After observers enter, this world becomes “bare and slightly lost.” The poem represents a drama of several hours, with shifting scenes portrayed in barely perceptible action. The method suits the subject well.
Dear Margaret,
Thank you for your very exact tracking of the structural features. I wasn’t really conscious of those things you point out, but I see what you mean now that I look at it. I suppose I was trying to convey a gradual process, but also the disorienting effect it nonetheless has. Thank you for your close reading.
I love how evocative this poem is. You successfully create the atmosphere right after a winter’s snowfall. I can also tell you’re from Boston when you rhyme “gauze” with “bars.”
Dear Adam,
From Boston!? lol. Well thank you for your [otherwise] kind remarks. 🙂 Atmosphere was definitely one of the main things I was trying to convey.
And as a side note, I’ve really learned a lot from you lectures on the Rising Tide Foundation site. I hope you will be returning there soon.