In honor of the beautiful snowfall we had yesterday, and the season in general, I thought I'd share Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "Cynthia in the Snow." I have many favorite snowy poems, but this pops into my head frequently when I'm looking at a snowy city street, especially the first musical line. "Sushes" is such a perfect word to capture that sense of blanketed quiet. The whole poem has that sense of being "just right."
Cynthia in the Snow
It SUSHES.
It hushes
The loudness in the road.
It flitter-twitters,
And laughs away from me.
It laughs a lovely whiteness,
And whitely whirs away,
To be
Some otherwhere,
Still white as milk or shirts.
So beautiful it hurts.
~Gwendolyn Brooks
Happy Poetry Friday! The roundup today is at A Teaching Life.
9 comments:
Lovely! And very fitting for the weather here too.
(The verification word is reflump. Which also seems to go with snow - maybe the sound it makes when it falls off a roof?)
Erin, trust you to make poetry out of the verification word! :-) "Reflump." Yes...I think that'll do nicely!
How have I not read this poem before? And I call myself a Gwendolyn Brooks fan! Well, thanks for sharing it, I liked it a lot.
Unfortunately, the Road Warriors here make sure the snow SLUSHES as soon as possible and it loses that lovely hushing and makes dirty brown splashings instead.
B.C., this wasn't a Brooks poem I knew either until I stumbled upon it in an anthology of poems for children. This was back a few years ago when my daughter was a toddler. I loved it then, and we still love it now!
Mary Lee, I know what you mean! It would probably be easy to parody this poem from the vantage point of winter weariness -- amazing how all that pristine whiteness can turn to muck and mire after the plows and innumerable cars go through. I much prefer the initial snow in the city, before anyone can do anything about it!
This poem is really good! I love the way the author hints about "snow" when she isn't actually talking about that. Although is creates a mental picture of pristine white snow, the onomatopoeia used in the poem describes something totally different. Thank you for the sharing!
Nice poem!
I was 1 year old when y'all said this
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