Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims’ "Six-Cornered Snowflake" is a visually and structurally unique poem, designed in the image of a six-pointed star, mirroring the crystalline geometry of a snowflake. The form itself is integral to the poem’s meaning, reinforcing its meditation on symmetry, transience, and the confluence of nature and history. The poem drifts between scientific wonder, architectural admiration, and an almost spiritual reverence for the delicate precision of snow and the structures it settles upon. Through a combination of intricate enjambment, lyrical phrasing, and historical reference, Nims creates a poem that, like a snowflake, is at once delicate and complex.

The opening lines introduce the motion of snow with "The / snows / curleycue / in slow pendulous / pavane, half lured to heaven yet, until / they too concede to earth, drift and accrue." The dance-like imagery of curleycue and pavane (a stately Renaissance dance) gives the snowfall a ritualistic grace, as if the flakes hesitate between earth and sky, reluctant to settle. The pendulous motion suggests a slow oscillation, as though each flake resists its inevitable descent. The phrase half lured to heaven yet anthropomorphizes the snow, implying a lingering attachment to the sky before surrendering to gravity.

Once fallen, the snow gathers on the rugged roofs like plowlands pitched / at odds, akimbo. The alliteration of plowlands pitched and the word akimbo evoke asymmetry, an intentional contrast to the natural perfection of the snowflake itself. The mottled-lavender / jumble of old-gold corrugated tile vividly captures the color and texture of the Prague rooftops in winter, a palette of decay and resilience beneath the new snowfall. Here, the poem subtly shifts from the natural world to the human-made, as the falling snow interacts with architectural history.

The historical layering deepens with lofting its crown of thorny towers / over a Prague still Gothic (1610), / Prague not yet voluted with baroque, / aspiring still. The phrase crown of thorny towers suggests not only the spiked silhouette of Gothic architecture but also a religious allusion to Christ’s crown of thorns, hinting at Prague’s deep ecclesiastical history. The parenthetical 1610 situates the city in a specific era, emphasizing its Gothic character before the sweeping curves of the Baroque era transformed its skyline. The word aspiring further personifies the city, suggesting a yearning or striving quality—perhaps a parallel to the snow’s initial reluctance to descend.

This sense of aspiration is visually and thematically reinforced by see many-steepled Týn! / church-spire on spire like missiles packed / all zeroed in on heaven. The Church of Our Lady before Týn, one of Prague’s most iconic Gothic structures, becomes a metaphor for human ambition. The simile like missiles packed is striking—it transforms the spires into weapons aimed at the sky, as if the very architecture seeks to challenge or pierce the divine. The phrase zeroed in on heaven carries both a literal and figurative weight, suggesting both precision and yearning, faith and aggression.

The closing lines, Zigzag streets / crevassing seesaw / gables all / round / Týn, mimic the labyrinthine quality of Prague’s medieval streets. The words zigzag and crevassing evoke movement and depth, emphasizing the city’s dynamic topography. The fragmented layout of the poem itself, shifting across different angles, visually enacts this sense of spatial disorientation, much like wandering through a snow-covered Gothic cityscape.

Beyond its visual and historical richness, the poem also reflects on the nature of structure itself—both the crystalline structure of a snowflake and the architectural grandeur of Prague. The snowflake, symmetrical and fleeting, contrasts with the city’s permanence, yet both are bound by mathematical and artistic principles. Nims plays with this duality: the transient meets the enduring, the organic meets the constructed, the individual flake meets the grand cityscape.

Formally, the poem’s shape as a six-pointed star enhances its thematic concerns. The structured irregularity of the text forces the reader to navigate the lines in an unconventional manner, mimicking the unpredictable path of a falling snowflake. The jagged line breaks and staggered phrasing reflect the way snow layers unevenly over a cityscape, settling in crevices and contours.

"Six-Cornered Snowflake" is ultimately a poem of convergence—between past and present, nature and civilization, order and entropy. Its form embodies its meaning, capturing the delicate, momentary beauty of snow while anchoring it in the historical solidity of Prague’s Gothic architecture. Nims’ language is both lush and precise, drawing the reader into a world where the ephemeral and the eternal intermingle, where a snowflake’s descent mirrors the aspirations of towers, and where even the most fleeting moment carries the weight of centuries.

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