Section 4
The fourth section of this poem takes place after
the father has already moved out of the house. It
starts with a mention of the time when he told
her that he must leave, but most of the stanza
takes place during a visit in the autumn, just as
the cold weather is arriving. Snodgrass describes
the plants and flowers that they see as they walk
together and the ways that the change in the
weather affects them. He specifically mentions
that these are not the flowers that the father and
daughter were planting in section 2 but munici-
pal flowers planted by the city.
In the sixth stanza of this section, the poet
compares the vines that are hardened and ruined
by the cold to the lines of poetry that he cannot
complete, showing how the emotional complexity
of his divorce and separation from his child
affects his life as an artist. In the last stanza of
section 4, he relates the story of a different child,
the daughter of a friend, who became so attached
to the sound of a cricket outside her window that
she cried when it died. This image connects the
coming of winter with a child’s emotional state,
conveying the sadness of the child who has to deal
with changes that are natural and unavoidable.
Section 5
This section takes place in the middle of winter.
The daughter is still three years old, as she was in
the section about spring planting, section 2.
Although she is still in the same year of her life,
much has changed: She has new friends, and she
has learned new songs. She has forgotten songs
that her father used to sing to her and she is no
longer familiar with his routines or habits, such
as singing to her before going out for a nighttime
walk. The poem illustrates this situation with the
image of Snodgrass’s footprints in the snow fill-
ing up with new snow over time.
At the end of this section, the poet uses the
image of an injured fox to show how he feels.
The fox is missing one leg, having chewed his
own leg off in order to free himself from a trap.
The fox returns to the place where the trap is
and, staring at his own paw, is aware that he
cannot feel it anymore.
Section 6
In section 6, the setting is Easter, which is tradi-
tionally thought of as marking the beginning of
the spring season. The daughter comes to visit,
and they go to the river; the river’s waters are
high, as rivers usually are in the spring, which
brings to mind the killdeers that were displaced
from their nests another time the river over-
flowed. This brings back other memories associ-
ated with birds.
The daughter remembers a time that a black-
bird attacked her father for coming near its nest.
They also recall starlings whose nests were
destroyed when workers cut down branches that
had been weakened by a wind storm and a pigeon
that the father tried to catch but had to let go
when she flapped her wings in panic. About the
last, Snodgrass notes that there are some things
that his daughter reminds him of that he is not
proud of.
In the last two stanzas of this section, the
poet recalls a time when he came to his daugh-
ter’s bed when she was sick and could not
breathe, comparing that feeling to how disabled
he felt after his divorce. He ends this section by
noting that he now has a new wife and an
adopted child to care for.Section 7
Section 7 offers a brief look at the father and
daughter playing on a July day. The father
pushes his daughter on a swing, and every time
he pushes her away she comes back to him with
even more force. This very action can be seen as a
symbol for their difficult relationship, which has
by this point reached a sense of balance.Section 8
In section 8, Snodgrass compares the relatively
easy relationship that the father and daughter
had when she was young with the strained rela-
tionship they have when she comes to visit him at
his new house. He recalls that as a baby she
would not eat unless her milk had some lemon
juice put in it and that as a toddler she would
chew the white clover in the yard. He recalls
taking her to the zoo and feeding the animals
from the bag lunches they brought with them.
After the divorce, he could not afford to have her
visit often and had to cut back on the times that
he could see her.
The second half of this section takes place at
Halloween. The daughter comes to visit for a
week. She dresses as a fox, but when the neigh-
bors ask who she is and she takes off her mask,
they still do not recognize her and ask whose
child she is, being unfamiliar with that part of
the poet’s life. The daughter has a terrible timeHeart’s Needle