future and the expectation that the dark winter
will eventually end in a time of rebirth and new
opportunities.
Giovanni believes in change and transfor-
mation. In the essay ‘‘An Answer to Some Ques-
tions on How I Write: In Three Parts’’ (1984),
Giovanni explains that all material is recycled
matter, born from other decaying things. She
observes that ‘‘what the plants expel, we inhale;
what decays into the ground gives forth fruits
and vegetables; when the glaciers pass, the lakes
are formed.’’ Nature and humankind are cycli-
cal, constantly reinventing themselves and every-
thing around them. Nature makes the new from
the old. The chipmunks gather the fallen nuts
each fall to eat through the winter, just as the
bears gorge themselves before hibernating, so
that they too can survive. In the spring, the
bears might well eat the chipmunks, but their
survival during the winter was not wasted, since
they ensured the survival of another living thing,
which might now mate and reproduce. The
speaker will bundle up against the cold, but she
knows that winter does not last. The key is to
survive until spring and rebirth. The poet under-
stands that to reach renewal, it is first necessary
to survive the winter, when no progress appears
to be made, and the earth appears to lay
dormant.
Giovanni also believes that life is about how
much effort is put into living and into achieving
what people desire most. She does not believe in
quitting or in offering excuses for what has not
been done. In this same essay, Giovanni claims
that ‘‘life is only about the I-tried-to-do.’’ Life is
not about the failures or the desires that were
postponed—not for her, anyway. Life is about
trying to do what does not always come easily.
Giovanni does not mind failure, she claims, but
she could not forgive herself if she did not try to
do all that she wants to do. She recognizes that
she has changed and that her work has changed
during the past decade, but she also celebrates
that change, since to do otherwise is to stagnate,
which she finds intolerable. Giovanni writes that
she seeks ‘‘change for the beauty of itself.’’ She
knows that everything changes and that there is
an attraction to change. Giovanni claims that
human beings have a ‘‘great opportunity to
grow up and perhaps beyond that.’’ She alludes
indirectly to Robert Browning when she claims
that ‘‘our grasp is not limited to our reach.’’
(Browning made the claim first in ‘‘Andrea Del
Sarto,’’ when he insists that ‘‘a man’s reach
should exceed his grasp.’’) Although people
should always work to achieve more than what
can be easily gained, Browning also thought that
individuals should persist in working hard to
achieve that which is just beyond their grasp.
Giovanni finds fulfillment in the continued
effort to grow and change, since according to
her, the only choice ‘‘is growing up or decaying.’’
It is this belief in the importance of change and
the opportunities that change brings that allows
Giovanni to continue to hope for social change
as well. Thus, ‘‘Winter’’ is not only about change
on an individual level. The poem also holds the
promise for a better world for all people.
Giovanni maintains that ‘‘writers live always
in the three time zones: past, present, and future.’’
She recalls the past in Browning but looks toward
the future in ‘‘Winter’’ where she describes the
preparation necessary for survival. For a brief
decade it appeared that there was momentum in
the quest for civil rights for African Americans,
which might result in significant change. How-
ever, change was slow to come. In her introduc-
tion toCotton Candy on a Rainy Day,Paula
Giddings writes that the poetry of the 1960s
‘‘recorded what we saw, more than what we felt.
But the sixties mostly made us look within our-
selves and we recognized the noblest of our spirit,
the courage inherent in rebellion, the reawaken-
ing of pride buried deep in our unconscious mem-
ories.’’ Giovanni uses her poetry to respond to
what she learned about herself in the 1960s. As a
result, her poems in the 1970s explore an emo-
tional response to that period. When the promise
of the 1960s seems to have failed in the 1970s,
‘‘Winter’’ served as a reminder that patience and
preparation are sometimes required to make way
for change to occur.AT ITS CORE, ‘WINTER’ REPRESENTS THEPROMISE OF THE FUTURE AND THE OPPORTUNITIES
THAT THE FUTURE MIGHT BRING, IF ONLY PEOPLE
LOOK BEYOND THE PRESENT AND BELIEVE IN THE
POSSIBILITY FOR CHANGE.’’
Winter