Billy Collins - Winter Syntax

     I enjoyed reading Winter Syntax by Billy Collins.  In this poem, Collins writes about the difficulties of writing literature through the representation of a “lone traveler” and his adventures through a blizzard.  He talks about the important features of good writing.  The poem starts off stressing the importance of the first sentence and how it is similar to a lone traveler going through a tough blizzard.  Collins allows readers to vicariously imagine the difficulties that a writer goes through while writing by using the relation of the traveler.  The snow is similar to a white page where the poet writes down their creative ideas.  The poem ends by saying “the man will express a single thought” as if to say that he had finally finished explaining the difficulties of writing.  The setting in this poem plays a very important role since it is significant because it makes the poem viewed in a different way.  This is a very different poem because it is talking about a sentence; it gives it life, and gives it a setting.  The setting is described as cold, like the cold of a forest or mountain in the winter time.  The cold weather makes us able to play with our imagination.  The text in the poem mentions a man and if we relate it closely then we can say that the man is the sentence that has taken life.  We are given mental pictures through the images of the snow, cold weather, and the lonely man.  Continuing to read on the author not only talks about the cold places.  The author mentions “the desert heat” in the second stanza.  This whole poem is like a journey.  It is like there is a journey involved and that the author himself is learning something about it.  He makes it seem as if writing is a journey.  A journey that has a beginning and an end.  The author also mentions that for every winter there is always a spring.  Comparing all this to a sentence relates to the finished sentence of a complete thought.