Great Poems: ‘The Snow Man’

I enjoyed this poem so much, I named this website after it-

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

***

This poem is just 1-2 run-on sentences, but spoken with some flourishes that make it a bit hard to track. If you read it slowly enough, you can get the basic pattern of the first sentence:

‘one must have a mind of winter…. and have been cold a long time….. to behold <all this cold, empty stuff>, an not to think of any misery <in it all>.’

Who has that ‘mind of winter?’ The Snow Man of course. But is it really a snow man, like the ones we make out of real winter snow in our own backyard, with carrot-nose and all? Or is it someone more human?…a ‘listener in the snow?’

Whoever it is, apparently this listener is engaged in a very Zen experience. He seems not to miss the things he does not see; and to take the nothingness around him in stride. I imagine he may be a monk of some kind; or ‘nothing himself’ he may be one who has achieved enlightenment.

A listener with a ‘mind of winter’ can recognize there is no misery; there is no emptiness, there is no barren place. Pull the thread and it’s all gone. And the listener (‘nothing himself’) is gone with it.