Blizzard

At its heart, “Blizzard” is a poem that glorifies the natural world as fluid and powerful. The speaker characterizes the natural phenomena of the blizzard at first as somewhat clumsy, but ultimately it becomes increasingly powerful and demonstrates its abundance. Most obviously, a blizzard is made up of an abundance of snowflakes and gusts of wind. A hive is full of an abundance of bees. An “alphabet” (Line 46) is made up of all of the letters in language. “Pointillis[m]” (Line 20) is made up of the abundance of different dots of color that add up to a whole. In this poem, the speaker suggests that nature is abundant, and because it is made up of infinite smaller parts, it can be more fluid and powerful. The snow is not characterized as rigid or having its own agenda but rather as “shaping” (Line 23) itself to the will of other objects. Likewise, art can be fluid and powerful. It is these small things added together—small choices, small actions, small adjustments—that make consequential changes.

The speaker does not say it outright, but presumably she is an artist. Her characterizations of the natural world demonstrate nature’s effect on her imagination.