Skip to main content

Something There Is That Doesn't Love A Snowman

The snowman we made last night had been trampled this morning when we awoke, by a chaos of children. His twig arms lay under snow like avalanche victims. His carroty nose was simply no longer present at the scene. His small stone eyes were unaccounted for. He was a gone snowman. He was the snowman who wasn't there. What drives someone to eradicate a snowman? Is it the nature of the materials? Is being built of snow an invitation to break what will melt into air anyway? Nature abhors a melting creature. What isn't solid gets knocked down to size. Molecules scatter, crystals dissipate, the melting white gentle thing dissolves and is forgotten, in the blizzard that is creation, in the murder that is the blizzard. One has to have a mind like an icepick to pick apart a snowman, or just be a wild child, running across snow, perhaps never so deeply seen before. Snowmen are invisible in snow, like poems are in a world of prose.
Labels:

Comments

Dave King said…
I have a theory: the folk who knock down sandcastles are moving inland. (of course, if you live on the coast, that buggers that theory!)
Mon Feb 02, 09:57:00 am 2009
Anonymous said…
But was your snowman any good? Out there with the kids this morning, our efforts (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannybirchall/3247455160/) were put to shame. I realised that whatever I've learnt in the past thirty years, it isn't how to make snowmen better.
Mon Feb 02, 03:13:00 pm 2009
Coirí Filíochta said…
Carol Ann Duffy mate. She's got previous for robbing snowmen.
Mon Feb 02, 07:55:00 pm 2009
Janet Vickers said…
Perhaps the being is not a child but a creature that has had joy scared out of it. What shall we call these creatures for they are becoming more apparent.
Mon Feb 02, 07:58:00 pm 2009
Amy Rose Walter said…
A young boy i live with told me how it it took him all day to work out how to make a snowman because he thought you made them like sandcastles. Once he'd worked it out, his brother ate his snowman's nose.
Tue Feb 03, 12:22:00 am 2009
James Midgley said…
I fear Janet may be right (in the broad sense). Still, your entry makes for something approaching a prose poem, which is nice. I owe you a copy of Mimesis 5 as yet. Will see to that.

Best to you,
J
Wed Feb 04, 12:48:00 pm 2009
Anonymous said…
Poor snowman....
Fri Feb 06, 06:12:00 pm 2009
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A  poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
Post a Comment
Read more

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...
15 comments
Read more

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more