Stanza 3
In the third stanza, the poet links back to stanza
one with a reminder of another animal that also
hibernates for the winter. Bears eat vast amounts
of food to store fat, on which their bodies feed
during winter when food is less available. Chip-
munks store nuts to eat during winter months
when food is scarce. Once again at the end of the
stanza the speaker notes her own preparations.
She stocks up on books to read during the winter
while she is snug indoors. During spring it is entic-
ing to be outside and stacked books go unread.
Fall is a time of harvest and preparation. But
during the winter books gathered earlier help to
pass the time and make the long seclusion mean-
ingful. The coming of winter is inevitable for all
living creatures. The animals and the speaker plan
for their retreat from harsh weather, from which
they will emerge when spring returns.
Themes
Change
An important theme of ‘‘Winter’’ is the prepara-
tion for change. In this poem the change is the
coming cold weather, which requires animals and
humans to prepare. Animals prepare for winter
by storing food, as the chipmunks do when they
gather nuts or the bears do when they eat extra
food to store fat. Humans also prepare for
change, as the poet notes. The change of seasons
requires less work for humans. The speaker airs
out the quilts that have been stored during the
summer. She also gathers together the books that
she envisions reading while homebound. Change
is not restricted to weather, however, in the col-
lectionCotton Candy on a Rainy Day.Some focus
on the 1970s, a decade in which African Ameri-
cans have seen few of the changes that the civil
rights movement sought to bring about. How-
ever, in ‘‘Winter’’ the poet sounds a more hopeful
tone in the preparations for the change of season.
Winter is as brief as any other season. After the
short days and long nights, spring brings rebirth
and new opportunities arise. The change that lies
beneath the surface in ‘‘Winter’’ is a reflection of
the poet’s hope for a change in society and the
fulfillment of the promises of the past seasons.
Nature
‘‘Winter’’ offers important lessons about the
exquisite planning of the natural world. Animals
have evolved survival skills for inhospitable cli-
mates. For example, bears prepare for winter by
eating vast amounts of food, which they store in
fat. Bears can gain forty pounds in a week as they
prepare for winter. During much of the year,
bears eat fish, but as rivers freeze, fish are no
longer available, and small animals begin to bur-
row into caves. If bears were unable to hibernate
and store excess fat, they would starve during the
winter. As they sleep through the winter, they
might lose 15 to 20 percent of their weight, but
if they have eaten enough food before winter’s
arrival, they will survive. In contrast, frogs and
snails do not store food; instead their bodies enter
a state that is similar to death, in which they use
little energy and can wait out the cold before
reawakening. Even chipmunks have an intuitive
sense that they must store food for the winter.
Humans prepare for winter in different ways.
Since food is not a problem for the speaker, she
prepares winter bedding. Giovanni’s poem is a
reminder to readers that nature finds ways to
help animals survive until spring, when they can
once again find food they need to nourish their
bodies as they give birth to their young.Style
Free Verse
Free verse is not restricted by previously estab-
lished rules of structure, rhyme, or meter. In
writing free verse, the poet does not need to
shape the poem to a particular meter; she can
create new rhythm and pattern to suit her pur-
poses. There is no previously fixed pattern of
rhyme or meter illustrated in ‘‘Winter.’’ Some
lines are four syllables, some are five, and others
are six. The lines have no rhyme scheme and
there is no punctuation. However, free verse is
never totally free of poetry styles and conven-
tions. Giovanni does use a stanza pattern, and
she does rely on some basic repetition of phras-
ing, but in general, ‘‘Winter’’ is free of conven-
tional rules of meter or rhyme.Parallelism
Parallel structure is a grammatical arrangement
of equivalent parts. Parallel parts are presented as
equal in order to make a certain point or for
illustration, and the grammar used underscores
that equivalence. In Giovanni’s poem, frogs and
snails are completely parallel in stanza one, equalWinter