About the poetry 'Snow'

Personally I find this poem quite interesting for the skills and techniques the author uses. I don't think it is a kind of poem that you can understand its meaning (if there is one) right after reading it once. But still, the beauty of the imagery, the way they are put together, the dialogue and the sentence structure make it a deep and appealing poem to me. Though everyone has different definitions for a good poem, and it is hard and unncessary to persuade the others about it, still I am going to share about some elements that I personally appreciate in this poem below.

Connection
To me, a good poem should have some kind of internal associations, some of which maybe actually quite obvious, whereas others can be shown in forms of symbols, or metaphor, etc.

In the second line of the poem, it writes 'I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.' The children may be making snowman, or the like. But the words kids, angels and snow are somehow linked closely to me. Like kids are always likened as angels because of their innocence, while snow and angels are both white in colors and come from the sky.

'For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground' can be interpreted in a way that, these angels were shot because they had 'invaded' the land of the human beings, in other words, a conflict between the nature and the human. While it may sound a little bit overinterpreted, for the second half of the sentence, it is quite striking and clear that the imagery of angel and snow have been fused and mingled together by the word 'shot and dissolved'.

There are also other connections, for examples, ice, photograph and water; ice, water and snow;
room, neighbour, property; voice, acoustics, blast and many more. The poem is developed by these connections of symbols and imagery gradually. Or, at least, it can be said that the linkages make the meaning of the poem more understand and acheive a beauty of unity from the perspective of views.

Contrast
The difference between indoor and outdoor; the narrator and Seth; the angels and the farmer; all resulting in an increase in the conflicting surface of the poem, though it is usually found in novel and stories, it can be regarded also as a kind of linkage between the imagery, and makes the content more vivid and readable.

*Chan Wing Hong*