,
Quote:
Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill
I find the whole orchestration so finely tuned, and I sense it is those lower-luster moments that so skillfully move the poem along, smoothing the ground for that line's sudden crescendo. The whole poem is a state of waiting at the familiar window, facing the familiar world—all the while watching for the extraordinary.
Nemo
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Coincidentally, I've been enamored with maestros lately. I've been watching clips of them at work and I'm in awe of their ability to embody music and to emanate it. I watched
Maestro and was blown away by
this scene of him conducting. It occurs to me that a poet must be both orchestra and maestro.
For me, it's as quiet and ethereal a winter poem as I can remember ever reading (though my memory is not good : )). The opening “long view” of something coming gives me an uneasiness but it doesn't last — and it returns again at the poem's close but now I have been soothed by the quietness in between. I love a quiet poem. The voice can be heard as if it is a singular sound coming out of the silence. This poem has that quality to it.
The title sets the tone. Using a verb sets the pace of the poem. Wintering can mean so many things. It adds a lot to the timbre that is the quietness in the poem. Although winter typically connotes coldness, wintering does not. In fact, my mind is drawn to something like the timbre of a dying hearth holding glowing embers. I’m not sure why that is. Wintering seems to speak of the N's mood as he recounts someone (not him) sitting at the window waiting for something to come, but then he thinks maybe it has already come, and then the N depicts a sleeping child on Christmas Eve being visited by someone who has come to spirit him away but doesn't. Instead, the visitor sings softly in the child's ear before exiting the room, again in a quiet way.. It's an amorphous presence. Quiet.
As Matt says, the poem leaves itself open to the reader to discover themselves whatever they will. Good p[oetry knows how to do that: lead the reader somewhere but then leave them there to discover for themselves what they will. In that regard the poem does so exquisitely, taking bits and pieces and loosely arranging them to blend into one.
The poem hints at being about death but it is not a poem about death anymore than winter is a season of death. In fact, each season brings with it its own aspect of death trailing behind it.
I could hear Emily Dickinson's
Because I could not stop for Death .
Oddly, I could also feel a dusting of
A Child's Christmas In Wales in the child-like ambiance of the poem. (But that may be due to the fact that I just spent all day with a group of small children reading books — some of them Christmas stories that were still lying around. To further cement the association, at one point I pushed a low coffee table up against the picture window to let them climb up and look out into the woods. I think they saw everything you could possibly see out the window and then some. Kids.)
I also love the way the trees “break” the horizon.
It’s great to read new poems of yours again…
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