Elise\’s Blog

Jennifer Reeser’s “Winter-proof”

• rhyme scheme: a-b-c-b, d-e-a-e
• 8-7 syllable pattern if you used “blessed” as one syllable (not BLESSed)
• alleteration: “Blessed be,” “gaze from the grave yard”
• assonance: “sweet pea, calendula, pink”
• hyphen after first line of each stanza
• two stanzas
• four lines per stanza
• “Blessed be the winter-proof blossoms” is capitalized both times
• beginning sentences of stanzas are capitalized
• first stanza is all one sentence
• second stanza has three sentences

In her poem, Reeser writes about certain flowers, such as “sweet pea, calendula,” “violet, camellia and rose” that she describes as “winter-proof.” This implies that these flowers grow during the winter months and that there is “nothing of fester or stink” in them, meaning that they won’t go bad or die. This is a strong contrast against the setting of this poem, which is a graveyard that the narrator is “Drawing my (her) gaze from.”