"Childhood," by David Baker
Let's gather and explore temperature and language in this slow-warming poem
Hello, readers. Happy February.
I’m not sure about you all, but I’ve always thought that this time of year is kind of tough. The holiday and New Year celebrations have ended and now it’s just regular winter: cold. That said, I’ve always found something admirable in the cold. It sharpens, exhilarates, makes you walk a little faster towards home. The snow glitters and the sky goes between extremes: a bright, chilling blue or a dull, bruising gray. Cold demands respect.
Here in LA, sun and 60-70 degree days mark our winter climate. While I’m extremely grateful for the ability to comfortably walk outside, I still get nostalgic for the frigid Syracuse winters. Snow and wind has its own fierce beauty, one that actively envelops you. In that spirit, I’d like us to read a poem that reminisces fondly on winters of the past. It’s by David Baker, an American poet born in Maine and raised in Missouri. He’s published thirteen books of poetry, serves as the Emeritus Professor of English at Denison University, and teaches regularly in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Baker has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Pushcart Foundation, and says he can’t see how he’d write without “a devout attention to place.” Let’s take a look at this piece, originally published by The New Yorker.
Childhood
by David Baker
I miss the cold, but not the cold breaking, not the small limbs sheared, nor the icepick cold white wind working its whole way through you no matter your coat and gloves, and no matter the blue scarf someone tied and tucked tight. The same cold blue all day in the sky. Frozen blue through limbs of the two standing elms. Brilliant each blue. Blue the color of new snow like wafers on the fields. Come in cold then, and the dark comes with you, kick off your boots and someone is rubbing your feet so they sting, then stop stinging. Now the bruised-apple- red bottle at the foot of your bed, steaming, and come morning woodsmoke in the kitchen. I miss the cold then, so cold there is singing.
“Childhood” is a cozy poem. Three stanzas of five lines each, with subtle internal rhymes, alliteration, and repetition lighting your path through the poem like an airport runway. Baker starts with a simple assertion: “I miss the cold, but not the cold breaking”. We’re in a place of nostalgia, but it’s measured. He begins with the brutality of winter, with “small limbs sheared” and “icepick cold”. “Small limbs,” along with the title, tells us that the speaker is a kid, that this is a poem of the past. Interestingly, Baker immediately abandons the word “I,” although it’s the first word of the poem. He moves into second person, using “you” and “your” through to the end. This direct address style immerses the reader more fully in the poem. It’s not David Baker (“I”) experiencing the winter, it is us (“you”).
Sonically, lines like “white wind working its whole way through you”, “tied and tucked tight”, and “Brilliant each blue. Blue the color of new” make this poem very pleasurable to read aloud. In tune with the youth of the speaker, there’s an absence of “hard” words in this poem, nothing you’d need a dictionary for. The use of alliteration and rhyme elevates the text from a simple childhood recollection to a more finely wrought, rhythmic language. These lines also pick out the images very clearly: you can feel the wind, you can see the blue sky, the white snow, the bruised-apple-red of the water bottle standing out beautifully in the mind. I love the visual world of this poem. The repetition of “blue” in the second stanza beats a satisfying sonic drum and re-emphasizes the frigidity of the winter.
And finally we land in the third stanza. We’re inside, it’s evening. Someone rubs our feet warm. I love how this poem gets warmer, from the chilling white wind of the first stanza, to the frozen blue of the second stanza, to the apple-red water bottle and woodsmoke of the third. The use of the word “someone” in both this stanza and the first contributes to the reader’s immersion, the non-specificity leaving space for us to imagine who that someone is, perhaps a parent or caregiver. This is a beautiful stanza, and this is what makes the winters so nostalgic: that you can come in from the gorgeous, brutal cold and have someone waiting to warm you, to start the fire in the kitchen. The rhyme of stinging/singing sits in my heart, the linking of those words indicative of a painful joy, the beauty and the harshness of winter, the fond childhood memories and the ache of missing those bygone days. It’s here that “I” re-enters the poem in the very last line, bringing us back to the present, to David Baker the adult. There’s a symmetry here, with both the very first and very last lines starting with “I miss the cold.” While the first line immediately undercuts its own assertion, the last line fully gives in to the nostalgia. By talking about the cold throughout the poem, Baker has rekindled his fondness and acknowledged his love of childhood winters. “So cold there is singing” has such emotional resonance. It catches in the throat and leaves us feeling bittersweet.
I hope this poem has brought you all some warmth during one of the coldest months of the year. Remember to sing.
If you want to read more of David Baker… check him out here.
If you want to write… try something about childhood. Really sink into the memories and sensations and give it a shot!
Hungry for more winter poems? Check out this one and this one.