Wintering Poetry
Using snow as meditation and inspiration
The woods are lovely, dark and deep this morning. As much as I love a spring rain, a searing summer day or a crisp fall morning, the settled hush of a thick snow is one of my favorite seasonal moments. Its stillness invites hibernation, thoughtfulness, and peace.
It’s Friday. School is out. Write a poem.
Instructions:
If you have some snow on the ground outside your window, spend some time looking at it. Notice how it sticks to trees, covers the ground, mutes all the objects in your yard or street. Open the window and breathe the air, registering how different it smells and tastes compared to a regular winter day. Notice how gray or white the sky is, how the snow swirls in the air instead of falling straight down.
Write for three minutes, describing the snow, the natural environment, the sounds and tastes of the air.
Write for three minutes, describing the feelings, emotions, and sensation watching snow or walking in snow evokes for you.
Write for three minutes describing any memories snow brings to you, the people and place of your past found in a winter remembrance or a snowy landscape.
Now read back over what you’ve written and circle five or seven words that seem particularly strong. Underline a few phrases and clauses that sing. Begin to shape the poem. What does the poem want to say? Are there multiple layers? Is there a shift? Is there music?
After writing your first draft, read one or two of the below selection of winter poetry to aid in revising your poem into a second or third draft.
Share with the world.
Lines for Winter by Mark Strand
Winter Moon by Langston Hughes
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
A Winter Bluejay by Sara Teasdale
My word of the year is wintering and I love this reading list