Louise Gluck: Snow

I’ve read Louise Gluck’s Snow a few times now and keep having to put it away and return to it. Life is not letting me get down to commenting and analysing as I would like to.

What is it about?

Unlike some of the others I’ve considered here, I actually understand this one without too much hard work. It’s about the strange love of a father for a daughter, a father who likes to hold his daughter where he cannot see her, exposed to the bitter winter wind and she learns to see the world like him, from his vantage point.

Gluck tosses together the most fascinating contradictions: a father carrying his daughter on his shoulders – an image of paternal affection – and then an averted gaze – someone who cannot face their confronter. This father keeps his daughter out of sight and, in doing so, teaches her to do the same with those she loves. She is staring into the same world that her face is staring into.

Sound

This piece is full of assonant vowel sounds, the repeated o’s of “going to New York”, “blow over the railroad ties”. These rounded full sounds become sparse at “I was learning”, where the daughter learns to see the world as her father does – empty.

Linebreaks
Gluck breaks the lines short so that they are clippy , preventing long flowing sentences from ever getting going. She also uses the breaks to swing the meaning of the line:

He holds me / (affection)
on his shoulders in the bitter wind

to stand like this, to hold me / (affection)
so he couldn’t see me

I remember / (sets one up for a reminisence)
staring sraight ahead

Why snow?
The poem is called Snow and it seems as if the word is intended to operate as a metaphor or a symbol for something more than just snow itself. After all, the poem is not about snow but about a father and daughter going to the circus – so why call it this unless the snow is somehow important. In S1 there is no snow, scraps of white paper are blowing over the railroad ties as they stand at the station. Only at the end of S2 is snow introduced. It is heavy snow which is not falling, but whirling around them.

What is the significance of the fact that the snow is not falling? Why take the trouble to tell us what the snow is not doing? I don’t know if I have the answer but these are my thoughts: In S1 the railroad ties can be seen, they are going to take the speaker and her father somewhere. Little scraps of paper blow over the ties, note not around them, but over the ties. These scraps are probably precursors of what is to come in S2.

In S2 it is no longer paper but snow. Still white, but not scraps – heavy. And it isn’t on the ties, it is whirling around them. Were it falling things could still be seen, but this snow that has already fallen and hidden the world and left everything white and hidden. The world is empty (this snow that she sees is described as part of the emptiness), but not because there is nothing in the world, but rather because that which is in the world is hidden by the whirling snow. She is no longer looking down from her father’s shoulders to the ground, the railroad ties, but staring straight ahead into the whirling snow.

Modification
I don’t normally post the poem, but I need to do so to illustrate the present point:

Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
scraps of white paper
blow over the railroad ties.

My father liked
to stand like this, to hold me
so he couldn’t see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us.

Not the collection of modifiers. See how sparse they are?

The verb choices are also interesting:
S1 – “are going to”, “holds”, “blow”
S2 – “liked”, “stand”, “hold” “see” and then
S2 – “remember”, “staring”, “learning”, “absorb”, “falling” and “whirling”
Note the change in length and form of the verbs.