Just like the coldest months of the year mean wearing appropriate clothes and drinking warm beverages, winter deserves its own poetic genre too. Here are some of my favourite poems to go back to during winter.
To start with the classics, I am starting with Yeats’ When you are old. This tenderly written poem manages to encapsulate the beauty and the melancholy of aging, using time as a device to prove that no matter how old the person it is addressed to gets, he will always love them. The line “but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,” always makes me shiver.
Moving onto one of my personal favourites, Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for death, is an unsettling personification of death, which, far from being a scary and evil entity, is portrayed as a kind and polite driver of a carriage. If you know the slightest bit about Dickinson, you must be aware of her constant use of the theme of death, which seems like a fitting topic for days when the sun sets a few hours after you have woken up. Some of her other poems that follow this vibe are I Heard a Fly buzz – when I Died or I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain.
If we were to dive deeper into darker tones, it becomes imperative to talk about Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven is obviously one of his most important masterpieces, if not the most. It is the absolute perfect poem to read on a stormy day, the scarier and gloomier the atmosphere is, the better. However, that is not the only winter coded poem of Poe, since Annabel Lee also makes its way into the list. The kingdom by the sea succeeds in evoking a cold and chilly atmosphere perfect for a winter evening.
Another poem perfect for winter is Robert Frost’s Stopping by woods on a snowy evening. This descriptive poem encompasses the perfect view of a cold and snowy scene, but somehow manages to make it feel warm and welcoming.
And last but certainly not least we have Sylvia Plath. Poems like Metamorphosis evoke the perfect disturbing atmosphere to read during a dark day. And of course, The Snowman on the Moor might be a particularly specific recommendation, but it is an essential for this list.
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