“First Snow” by Mary Oliver explores the changing of the seasons from fall to winter and through that the ideas of blanketed truths and the reality that answers may be stumbled upon in the most unlikely circumstances. The setting of a country house in the midst of a snow flurry beckons with it strong imagery and ideas that Oliver uses to great advantage in her poem.
The poem itself is written in free verse with no repeated rhyme schemes, meters, or structure of any categorizable variety. The poem is 35 lines longs but is not separated into any sections and flows with a spattering of punctuation throughout. Oliver chooses to have her lines and sentences run together so only a handful of lines (11 to be exact) end with punctuation of of those even fewer ( 2) end with periods. This syntax choice gives the poem the feel of snow falling, an action that has no particular order in which it is carried out and can be interrupted at any time. Within these lines Oliver uses a simile to describe “trees [glittering] like castles of ribbon” to further her snowy imagery. She also employs alliteration in line 9 (‘fever flowing’).
Oliver takes her snowfall image and runs with it throughout the poem. In the first seven lines Oliver personifies the snow saying that its “white rhetoric” is everywhere and that it has “such an oracular fever” as it flows all around. These images of a rhetoric and oratory give the snow an academic personality beckoning the people in to learn from it. This symbolism feeds into the theme of the poem as Oliver talks about how she has so many unanswered questions and with this the idea of the unknown. The snow however acts as an educator where near the end she explains how “walking out now into the silence and the light under the trees and through the fields” into the realm of the snow feels like an answer to her. This symbolism is contrary to the usual connotation of winter that is loss and darkness while she chooses to make it discovery and light.
The poem is simply written and this allows the reader to sink in and imagine any snowy day they have experienced. Oliver places this peaceful and thought-provoking experiences of the speakers and broadcasts it for everyone because we have all had moments like these. It is very effective in provoking thoughts of peace and learning through an introspective approach. It is a wonderful poem.
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