"The Souls That Snow": Winter in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Abstract

NVOLVED IN THE VERY ESSENCE of seeing New Englandly are the 1 rotation-the flitting-of the seasons and especially the Snow's Tableau winter. It would seem logical, on the basis of such a statement, to expect a great deal of winter imagery-cold, snowy Connecticut Valley imagery-in Emily Dickinson's poetry. Yet, except for a very few poems (i.e., 258, There's a certain Slant of light, / Winter afternoons-), winter imagery seems strangely absent. While poems concerning the other seasons abound, Thomas H. Johnson finds that she devoted the fewest poems to winter.2 In his article on Dickinson's late summer and autumn poems, Ernest Sandeen concurs, adding that in view of her deep to this season it is not surprising that she wrote very few winter poems.. And while several critics investigate Dickinson's seasonal-cycle imagery, no one goes much further than simply accepting the poet's aversion as a reason for winter's absence.!