The object of the present work is to discuss and analyze the poem “Snowdrops” by Louise Gluck.

Considering the title, the poem may be about winter that is the season in which the snowdrops born. Moreover, I expect the poem to be about a cheerful part of winter as flowers brighten the cold atmosphere of winter.

Considering the layout, the reader realized the poem does not to follow a regular pattern, indeed it is organized in four stanzas which have respectively three, eight, two and one lines.
With a more careful reading, you can see that the first line of the poem is the longest of all the text. It addresses to a snowdrop, using the personal complement pronoun “you”, to refer to it, and probably also the speaking voice is a snowdrop.

The first line begins with a question asked by the speaking voice about his life in a past tense.
In this line there is an alliteration where the sound “w” is repeated.
After the first question, the speaking voice says that the recipient of the poem knows what is “despair”. In the third line of the first stanza is used the verb “should”, that expresses a recommendation.

The second stanza starts with the imagine of the surviving of the speaking voice thus he feels surprised. The feeling of surprised is so strong, that the expression “I did not expect to” is repeated in both two first lines of the second stanza, creating an anaphoric structure.

Moreover, also the word “again” is repeated in the third and in the fifth line of the second stanza.
This word underlines the repetition of an action, which in this case is waking up from what appeared to be certain death.
In this stanza the speaking voice describes his/her reaction to survival and his/her body’s ability to perceive stimuli.
Moreover, in the fifth line is used the verb “remembering”. It is gerund and it gives the idea of movement because it is used to express activities.
With the last two lines of the second stanza the speaking voice wants to convey the imagine of beginning of a new season that leads to stating a new life. Indeed, the expression “earliest spring” is used to announce a new season, in particular spring, while the expression “cold light” refers to the end of winter.
You can therefore speak of dying to start over.

In the third stanza there is an enjambment which, in addition to contributing to the rhythm of the poem, on syntactic level creates a close connection between the two lines.
Moreover, the two lines are connected with the figure of speech of anaphora: indeed, the word “yes” is repeated in both two lines.

The last stanza of the poem is arranged of only one line. the speaking voice makes this choice to focus the reader’s attention on it. The expression “the raw wind” conveys the imagine of a very cold and hostile wind, that hinders the birth of the flower. Indeed, previously it is said that it emerges from the ground, meeting the winter tempore and all its intentions, represented by the use of the expression “raw wind”.
In the death of winter, where there are no flowers and trees are bare, the snowdrop therefore represent the sign of life and hope for the arrival of spring which, in the poem, is represented by the expression “the new world”. In fact, despite the cold, he has the strength to go on, emerging from the ground.

Furthermore, here there is an alliteration that is the repetition of the consonant sound “w” that remind to the sound of the “raw wind”.