Poetry Friday: First Snow

Happy Poetry Friday, friends. As I write this post on Thursday afternoon, we are expecting our first snow of the winter season.I went looking for a "winter walk" poem (preferably, with dog), and instead landed on Henry David Thoreau's essay "A Winter Walk."As an exercise, I took Section 4 (featuring a baying dog) and adapted it into poetic lines. Since I've been working on a prose novel for some months, thinking about phrasing and line breaks was a good work out for my flabby poetry muscles. It also helped me to engage more deeply with Thoreau's gorgeous language as I broke it down into lines, paying close attention to sound and meaning. Many of us tend to focus on visual images when we write, but the sense of sound -- and how it is brightened by the cold -- is on Thoreau's mind here.As a winter baby, I especially love the final lines of this section. A walk on a cold day is, for me, "an elixir to the lungs, and not so much a frozen mist as a crystallized midsummer haze, refined and purified by cold."Have you ever tried adapting a piece of prose by another author into a poem? What did you learn? I wonder if this this exercise would work well in the classroom.A SOURCE OF DELIGHTFrom "A Winter Walk," by Henry David ThoreauFull text at American Transcendentalism WebWe hear the sound of wood-choppingat the farmers' doors,far over the frozen earth,the baying of the house-dog,and the distant clarion of the cock,though the thin and frosty airconveys only the finer particlesof sound to our ears,with short and sweet vibrations,as the waves subside sooneston the purest and lightest liquids,in which gross substancessink to the bottom.They come clear and bell-like,and from a greater distance in the horizon,as if there were fewer impedimentsthan in summerto make them faint and ragged.The ground is sonorous, like seasoned wood,and even the ordinary rural soundsare melodious, and the jinglingof the ice on the trees is sweet and liquid.There is the least possible moisturein the atmosphere, all being dried upor congealed, and it is of such extreme tenuityand elasticity that it becomesa source of delight.The withdrawn and tense skyseems groined like the aisles of a cathedral,and the polished air sparklesas if there were crystals of ice floating in it.As they who have resided in Greenland tell usthat when it freezes "the sea smokeslike burning turf-land, and a fog or mist arises,called frost-smoke," which "cutting smokefrequently raises blisters on the face and hands,and is very pernicious to the health."But this pure, stinging coldis an elixir to the lungs, and not so mucha frozen mist as a crystallizedmidsummer haze, refined and purified by cold.