Jane Hirshfield, "A Chair in Snow"

I thought I should share Jane Hirshfield's "A Chair in Snow" because it so beautifully illustrates the weight of the season. All Hirshfield does is meditate on a chair in snow. There's no overt mention of festivities or loss. Rather, there's a mere object, which could "hold / a soul its quick and few bendable hours," and a sense that we should not let go of the memories we have of this time:

A Chair in Snow (from Poetry)
Jane Hirshfield
  
A chair in snow
should be
like any other object whited
& rounded

and yet a chair in snow is always sad

more than a bed
more than a hat or house
a chair is shaped for just one thing

to hold
a soul its quick and few bendable
hours

perhaps a king

not to hold snow
not to hold flowers

"A Chair in Snow" alludes, I believe, to at least two famous poems which also deal with themes like death, life, and loneliness. Hirshfield's first stanza recalls Robert Frost's "Design." The clause "[a] chair in snow / should be / like any other object whited / & rounded" is followed by "and yet a chair in snow is always sad." A chair ordinarily would be an object of joy; "whited / & rounded" it would join the joys of all objects gently covered with snow. However, I think we can probe more deeply into Hirshfield's poetic choices. The opening of "Design" offers a constructive parallel to consider. There, Frost meditates on a spider eating a moth, asking if the horror of the situation reflects the intent of the Creator. But the way he describes that spider reminds one of a baby on a blanket: "I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, / On a white heal-all...". Note the word choice: "dimpled," "fat," "white." With that in mind, I see Hirshfield's snow, "whited / & rounded," as having a hidden solemnity. It brings purity, innocence, and the questions which can break us together.

With that in mind, I want to turn to Hirshfield's third stanza. So much in our lives revolves around a sense of security which simply isn't real. That sense of security depends on our feelings of accomplishment. We can do things, we tell ourselves. Hirshfield's third stanza juxtaposes a simple chair with those sentiments. "[M]ore than a bed / more than a hat or house / a chair is shaped for just one thing," which is to hold a soul for a small amount of time. A mere chair can be seen as doing the same thing as the body itself. The beds we make, the hats we wear, the houses we build do not quite compare. However, if we are speaking of the seat of the soul, you'll note the philosophical grounds have shifted. If the question of how body and soul unite entail a concern about "being," then the question of a chair, the matter of friendship or companionship, would more properly be the concern of "being with."

This puts Hirshfield in dialogue with another mainstay of the tradition. Recall Dickinson's "The Soul selects her own Society." It's a complicated poem–I'm not entirely sure what it means–but it has a ruthlessness to it. Dickinson tells us "an Emperor be kneeling / Upon her Mat," but Dickinson (or, ok, "the Soul") will "close the Valves of her attention – / Like Stone." Here, Hirshfield tells us that the chair may hold "perhaps a king," before implying that the chair she's staring at has flowers on it, resembling a gravestone. If we believe Dickinson endorses a tough solitude as essential to the life of the mind, we may see Hirshfield as pushing back hard against that notion. "A Chair in Snow," to be sure, isn't about the life of the mind. But it begins with a world where the reality of grief and loss cannot be separated from the smallest warmth. If you wave hi to your neighbors from your porch or ask how someone is doing – if you just sit in a chair as a guest – you are making the world what it is. Positing a certain solitude as essential talks past this; "being with," one might say, has priority to whatever knowledge can be derived from a focus on one's "being."

The older I get the more it dawns on me that I cannot take a moment with anyone for granted. I have to become the annoying guy who asks the Starbucks cashier about their whole life while there's a line. The reason for this has less to do with feeling desperate or abandoned and more an increasing consciousness that those around us won't be there forever. I used to work at a convenience store with a clientele whose jobs literally worked them to death. Since people tended to come in at regular times, when they were gone there was just silence and a lack of motion. It is a mark of growing older that I can say what a terrible privilege it is to know something has gone missing.