To the Snake (1960). Detailed description

Appearing in her third book of “American” poetry, With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads, published in 1960, “To the Snake” provides us with a good example of Levertov’s objective poetry. Recall from the previous discussion of organic form that Levertov believes objects are inherently ordered. Careful attention allows poets to discover an essential structure, which may not immediately present itself. With that artistic theory informing her writing, she carefully describes and elucidates particular objects she observes.

“To the Snake” focuses on an experience with a green snake. The scene takes shape through the voice of a first-person narrator who encounters the snake while with friends. The speaker leaves much of the context for this meeting out of the poem and instead concentrates on the snake itself as an object of stimulation. As Levertov explains in her essay “Some Notes on Organic Form” from Poet in the World, poets see certain things that move them to speech. In this case, the visceral touch of a snake encourages the narrator to describe the snake’s “cold, pulsing throat,” “arrowy gold scales,” and the “whispering silver” of its “dryness” (Selected Poems 14). Here we see the deep pleasure that Levertov takes in nature and the experience of tangible things, both of which recur throughout her poetry.

“To the Snake,” however, provides a look into the darker side of Levertov’s adoration of the concrete. While we may read the poem as nothing more than a charming description of a brief moment in nature, the sensual adjectives and strong emotional connotations resonate with deeper meanings and contradictions. In the last line Levertov describes the speaker as both “smiling and haunted” (14). The conjunction of the two suggests that part of the enjoyment of handling the snake is derived from the sense of danger. Many critics go so far as to read the poem as a metaphor for erotic pleasure. Such an understanding gives the snake symbolic importance as a typical phallic image or, alternately, as an allusion to the biblical story of Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Whether or not we wish to read the snake as symbolic, the poem still presents challenges to consider. Both the brevity of the moment and the fleeting pleasure that it provides find expression in the structure of Levertov’s free verse poem. The term free verse describes poetry that does not organize its lines according to a regular metric pattern. True to her belief in intrinsic form, Levertov organizes “To the Snake” by indenting every second line.

The indentations create a sense of slithering quickly down the page until the last coiled stanza, which describes the snake fading “into the pattern / of grass and shadows.” Although the snake leaves “a long wake of pleasure,” the speaker can hold on to it only momentarily (14). Speaker and reader alike are left to ponder the experience and re-create it in language as concrete as the event itself.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Read several other descriptive poems by Levertov, such as “Pleasures” and “The Tulips,” and compare the imagery to that of “To the Snake.” Do they all draw from nature? Do they all include strong connotative meanings? What other similarities or differences do you detect?

2. Considering the symbolic possibilities of the snake, reevaluate the poem’s meaning(s). You may include a discussion of the common associations we make with snakes. Do those associations change as a result of the specification of a green snake?

3. Notice that the poem is written to the snake, addressing it as “you.” What effect does this have on our understanding of the relationship between the speaker and the snake?

4. The title presents an ambiguity. While “To the Snake” might mean for the snake, as in the poem is written to the snake, “To the Snake” might also suggest movement, as in, toward the snake. Consider the different possibilities implied by each.