Six Reasons for Reading Poetry in Winter

1. A calligraphy of silence

Poetry is a form of art born out of stillness, a calligraphy of silence. Winter is a season of prolonged quietness & far-flung voids, a frozen expanse against which syllables take on a new resonance:

“And now that the moon who gives men glistening bodies

is in her exaltation, and can look down on the sun

I see descending from the ships at dawn

slim naked men from Cnossos, smiling their archaic smile

of those that without fail come back again”

from Middle of the World by D.H. Lawrence 

2. Stanzas are doors that open on empty rooms

Winter is a season of faint mystery – a mystery brought about by ice, hail and blizzards. Cold fosters eerie sensations. Stanzas are doors that open on empty rooms, whose inhabitants have long vacated the premises, leaving behind a melon hat, boa feathers and a rickety broom.

"Suddenly
I awoke so far away
and strange,
wandering behind my face
as though I had hidden my feelings
in the senseless relief of the moon."

from Season’s end by Nichita Stanescu.

3. Moment’s forest 

If it’s true that spring is a season of exultation and budding love, then winter is the season of objectivity and clarity – a heart’s needle:

“I imagine this midnight moment’s forest.

Something else is alive

Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move”

from The Thoughtfox by Ted Hughes 

4. Contrast

Contrast. Everything in winter is about contrast – every hue is a counterpoint to the snow’s  whiteness:

"What is this dark and silent caravan
that being nowhere, neither comes nor goes;
that being never, has no hour or span;
of which we can say only that it flows? "

From The Air by Don Paterson

5. A blue egg is laid

Winter is a season of dull hypocrisy: we are hardly at ease, hardly ever ourselves, quaint animals tucked away  inside a shell of gloves, scarves, boots and jackets.

"…Solitude! the blue egg laid by a great sea-bird, and the bays at morning all littered with gold lemons! – Yesterday it was! The bird had taken off!"

from Anabasis by Saint-John Perse 

6. The describable season
 

Winter is a describable season, whose tenets are easy to nail down. Autumn -  diffuse, sonorous and glittery -  makes for a complex slithering  into melancholy. Winter is the simple, straight-forward season par excellence:

"The sun is spent, and now his flasks
    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
            The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph."

From A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day by John Donne