Consisting of five unrimed tercets, Stevens’ “The Snow Man” is as tricky as Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” The speaker formulates a proposition through a Zen koan-like façade, then concludes by heaping negatives on top of one another, an act akin to the piling on of snowballs that ultimately make up the structure of a snowman. Otherwise, there is no “snowman” in the poem; there is only a mind that quietly practices stilling itself in order to realize certain truths about the nature of reality.
First Tercet: “One must have a mind of winter”
The speaker begins with the assertion, “One must have a mind of winter,” which puts forth a fascinating proposal that demands attention. What exactly is “a mind of winter”? Is it a clear mind, a cool mind, or simply a mind-set that is capable of grasping the significance of a winter scene? Perhaps it is merely a mind full of winter, a mind that lets itself engulf the whole idea of winterness.
The idea of having this “mind of winter” is important and cannot be lightly dismissed, because the rest of the poem depends upon a clear sense of its significance, as in the second line that reports one reason that having that winter mind is important. One has to have this winterness of mind in order to consider the reality of “the frost and boughs / Of the pine-trees crusted with snow.”
If one does not have the right frame of mind, that is, that “mind of winter,” one will not be able to grasp what the cold might be reporting.
Second Tercet: “And have been cold a long time”
In addition to having this winter mind, however, one also requires the experience of “hav[ing] been cold a long time.” Without the winter mind and the physical experience of coldness, the observer will fail to approach the reality of “the juniper” and “the spruces” as they hang with ice. The speaker implies that a somewhat other-than-human experience is necessary to know what the trees and shrubs are experiencing.
Third Tercet: “Of the January sun; and not to think“
The speaker places this winter scene in the “January sun,” a contrast that offers no refuge from the biting and bitter cold. Then he reveals why the “mind of winter” and the experience of having been cold a long time are necessary: Without these two benefits, one “think[s] / Of [ ] misery in the sound of the wind.” Even “the sound of a few leaves” adds to this “misery.”
Fourth Tercet: “Which is the sound of the land“
Bitter cold makes human beings miserable unless they can become mentally prepared to withstand it. The speaker then continues a long clause qualifying “the sound of the wind.” The sound of a “few leaves” and the sound of the wind bring the “sound of the land.” That land is filled with the “same wind” that swoops into the mind of the observer capable of grasping the inordinate cold.
Fifth Tercet: “For the listener, who listens in the snow”
The speaker then dramatizes the act of listening to this wind in the snow. This particular listener is “nothing himself.” Yet he is capable of realizing the “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” Of course, this listener is the “snow man,” not the “snowman” made of snow setting out in the yard, but the human man who has learned to still his mind and become one with all the attributes of frozen leaves, frost encrusted pine branches, and that lonely wind that blows in from barren places.
Another Stevens Article: Stevens' "The Death of a Soldier": The Nihilistic Imagination
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