Poetic Resonance: Kazim Ali’s Poem “The Year of Winter”
Michael Grodesky
When I first get acquainted with a poem, I like to read it just to get a sense of how it feels. How I experience its sounds and rhythms. Especially, without trying to understand the poem’s meanings, I listen for how its resonance rises to the surface. To me, the idea of reading a poem just for its sound and feel is what separates poetry from prose.
The Year of Winter
By Kazim Ali
It has spilled to me, my parentage,
I am aghast—
For ninety-one days the winter has been piercing me,
ninety-one days the year threading through.
How is it possible I ceased to believe in tongues?
The fallen red rimed by morning’s white amendments.
Tuesday’s reminders: visit the bank,
check the tires, hit the road. . .
A four-hour drive to Pennsylvania under
autoscrivening sky—
Who can blame my mistrust when the gray sky
revises its most sacred opinion,
who could ever have believed you, mad heart,
that fog and soot are brethren,
the shape of want and war are identical,
a submerged river, flowing eight hundred feet beneath us—
I first heard Kazim Ali speak when my friend Elizabeth and I attended his reading in 2010 at Open Books, a wonderful bookstore in Seattle dedicated entirely to poetry. I remember he read with a sort of humble, spiritual tone. I liked the way his lines seemed to gently resonate against the space of the small room.
I have come to learn that resonance is the heart of a poem. It is the emotional and intellectual echo, and the symbolic depth and musicality a poem creates. There are various ways in which a poet might develop this effect. In his book The Art of Daring, poet Carl Phillips suggests that one way to create resonance in a poem is to develop a sense of tension. In The Year of Winter, Kazim Ali develops tension, and hence, resonance, in several ways.
As is sometimes the case, Ali writes in a modified ghazal form. Here we have non-rhyming couplets that are intentionally unrelated to each other. The unrelatedness of the lines, I think, sets up a quiet background tension.
As poet Asa Drake pointed out in a Debutful (2025) Interview detailing her book Maybe The Body, a poet must sometimes navigate the gap between what is obligation and what is desire. One is sometimes surrounded by things (or people) one loves, but with whom they may struggle to co-exist. I think the gap Drake is referring to, as expressed in Ali’s poem, creates a sense of human-to-human tension.
It has spilled to me, my parentage,
I am aghast—
Another way Ali creates tension in the poem is with the simple word “to.” The speaker’s parentage spills “to” him. It would be a different poem if he had said parentage spilled “on” him. The word “to” implies a transfer, an inheritance that comes with responsibility. Something given, like a sacrament, that calls for a response. The word “on” implies something forced, something unwanted like a stain. Here, the act of spilling his parentage “to” him implies that the speaker sees his parentage as both a gift and a burden, The strong dash at the end of the second line enhances the feeling that the speaker is “aghast” even though we don’t fully know why.
There is tension in Ali’s poem through the juxtaposition of complex considerations such as, “How is it possible I ceased to believe in tongues?” (In the Muslim tradition this may mean, among other things, a remembrance of god), combined with the mundane tasks of remembering to go to the bank and to check the tires. Interestingly, one might also see a casualness in the loss of belief and a complexity in visiting the bank.
How is it possible I ceased to believe in tongues?
The fallen red rimed by morning’s white amendments.
Tuesday’s reminders: visit the bank,
check the tires, hit the road. . .
For me, one of the most elegant couplets in the poem comes when the speaker asks how one might believe one’s own heart that sees how unrelated substances such as fog and soot could become “brethren.”
who could ever have believed you, mad heart,
that fog and soot are brethren,
Seemingly, they are completely different substances, yet the speaker calls them brethren. The “mad heart,” as he puts it, compels fog and soot to coexist. Perhaps initially it is easier for the reader to think of these elements in scientific terms. Fog and soot interact as fog rapidly ages and transforms the physical structure of soot, while soot fundamentally alters the physical life and visibility of fog in a sort of feedback loop. But in the poem as a whole, it seems more complex and hence more tension-producing to think of this liaison as a “heart” experience.
In her book of essays on poetry, Proofs & Theories, Louise Glück suggests that just relating images in a poem does not guarantee that the reader will be moved. She argues that tension creating resonance is often achieved by using “negative capability,” that is, the poet’s ability to embrace mystery, doubt, and uncertainty without feeling the need to explain or solve everything. Perhaps the genius in Ali’s poem is that he does exactly that in the last stanza.
the shape of want and war are identical,
a submerged river, flowing eight hundred feet beneath us—
Here, he asks the reader to accept that the abstract term “the shape of want,” is identical to the more concrete “shape of war”. And the strong dash used at the end of the last line feels like a startled breath in, almost a gasp. You inhale the tension of what is unexplained, similar to the second line in the first stanza, and the poem leaves you intentionally suspended and unresolved.
The Year of Winter is from Kazim Ali’s Collection The Fortieth Day
Published by BOA Editions LTD, Rochester New York, 2008
Used here with permission
Other References:
Phillips, Carl 2014 The Art of Daring, Graywolf Press Minneapolis
Debutful Discover New Voices, Drake, Asa. Maybe The Body, 2025.
Gluck, Louise. Proofs & Theories, Essays on Poetry, The Ecco Press, 1994 New Jersey