Here are
two poems sharing the title “Snow,” the first by Maureen Seaton (1991) Snow by
Maureen Seaton : The Poetry Foundation and the second by Naomi Shihab Nye (1998). http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970
They are
an invitation for us to think about this season and all seasons (add in Wallace
Stevens” “The Snow Man” last time). Do you
have a preference?
Because
Seaton’s poem is overtly political and Shihab Nye’s is domestic and personal, I
might be asking for a comparison of fire hydrants and cauliflower. So let me
say up front that what interests me is that Seaton’s gritty New York portrait of
biracial lesbian lovers, from different socioeconomic strata, seems no more
interesting or “deeper” than Shihab Nye’s recollection of a girl pulling her younger
brother up a snowy hill on his sled.
 |
| Not a Winter Hill, Not a Sled |
This pair
of poems illustrates, for the ten-thousandth time, that the devil really is in
the details. I learn more from and about Shihab Nye’s children than I do from
Seaton’s adult characters, though I’d have thought them more significant, richer material, caught as
they are in the midst of just about every major prejudice.
Here are
three gems from Shihab Nye that might compel our deeper wondering about sister,
brother, and family, both then and now:
my brother whom I called by
our secret name//
as if we could be other people under the skin.
People would dig their cars
out like potatoes.
How are you doing back there? I shouted,
and he said Fine, I’m doing fine,
in the sunniest voice he
could muster
and I think I should love
him more today
for having used it.
She should love him more? What is the gap
that remains between them as adults? In the childhood home, there was an unexplained “raging
blizzard of sobs,” and now we might wonder about secret names, or being “other
people under the skin.” Shihab Nye might be teasing us with incomplete
information, but at least she is imbuing her characters with ample human
complexity.
 |
| Dove and Dark-Eyed Junco |
I’m
inclined to like the two, but
consider the second stanza where the speaker confesses her white guilt:
[I] strolled along the river, believing
I
belonged there, that my people
inherited
this wonderland
unequivocally,
as if they deserved it.
There’s a
social consciousness there, and I’m glad the speaker sees her unfair advantages
in finding fine housing. But if we’re the kind of people who read serious
poetry, aren’t we just as likely to say, “What took you so long to notice and
care about these inequalities?”
I’d be
more moved by the situation if there were more thorough characterization, with
or without a sociopolitical context, such as these interesting lines about the
lover:
My lover buys twinkies from the Arabs,
bootleg
tapes on ‘25th,
and
carries a blade in her back
pocket
although her hands
are
the gentlest I’ve known.
She
ignores the piss smells
on
the corner . . .
In that
brief passage, she comes alive,
so I’d like to know her and the speaker in more
contexts like this. I wonder if the poem’s situation lends itself better to
fiction or essay than poetry.
I’m not
satisfied with either poem’s conclusion, and in both works, I want more
information. But at least both poems interest me enough to wish for a more
complete understanding of their characters.
Snow by Maureen Seaton : The Poetry Foundation
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970
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