Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Howard Nemerov’s poem “Icehouse in Summer” delves into the interplay between past and present, memory and reality, using a historical context to explore themes of decay, memory, and mortality. The poem is rich with imagery and narrative, painting a vivid picture of a boy’s summer experience intertwined with the recollection of winter’s labor and tragedy.

The poem begins with a description of the icehouse itself, a place where the seasons intersect in a paradoxical way: “A door sunk in a hillside, with a bolt / thick as the boy's arm.” This imagery immediately creates a sense of something both physically imposing and mysterious. The icehouse, hidden within the earth, evokes a feeling of ancient, almost sacred preservation. Behind its door lies “the walls of ice, melting a blue, faint light, / an air of cedar branches, sawdust, fern: / decaying seasons keeping from decay.” Nemerov juxtaposes the concepts of decay and preservation, illustrating how the icehouse keeps the remnants of winter intact during the summer, maintaining a connection to the past even as it melts away.

The narrative shifts to the boy’s perspective, a “summer guest” who has never witnessed the ice cutting but learns about it through a servant’s tale. This adds a layer of secondhand memory to the poem, emphasizing the distance between the boy’s current reality and the past events. The servant’s description of the ice cutting process is detailed and laborious: “how the lake / froze three foot thick, how farmers came with teams, / with axe and saw, to cut great blocks of ice, / translucid, marbled, glittering in the sun.” The imagery here is vibrant and tactile, capturing the physical effort and the beauty of the ice.

The poem takes a darker turn with the story of a tragic accident: “a team and driver drowned in the break of spring: / the man's cry melting from the ice that summer / frightened the sherbet-eaters off the terrace.” This haunting memory intrudes upon the idyllic summer scene, merging the past tragedy with the present. The cry of the drowned man symbolizes the inescapable presence of death and the way it can haunt the living. This moment disrupts the guests' enjoyment, linking the luxury of the great houses to the labor and loss that support it.

Nemerov continues to blur the lines between past and present, reality and memory, as the poem progresses. The imagery of “Dust of the cedar, lost and evergreen / among the slowly blunting water walls” conveys a sense of timelessness and inevitability. The tools of labor, the “blade edge” and “steel saw’s bite,” become dulled over time, much like the memories themselves. The boy, now reflecting as an adult, realizes the permanence of these memories: “I was the silly child / who dreamed that riderless cry, and saw the guests / run from a ghostly wall.”

The final lines of the poem introduce a sense of historical and cultural decay: “so long before / the winter house fell with the summer house, / and the houses, Egypt, the great houses, had an end.” The reference to Egypt evokes a sense of ancient civilizations, suggesting that all human endeavors, no matter how grand, are subject to time’s relentless progression. The icehouse, the summer estate, and the great houses symbolize human efforts to control and preserve, ultimately doomed to fail against the forces of decay and change..

The Book of Amos, a prophetic book in the Old Testament, foretells the destruction of the houses of Israel as a consequence of their sins and injustices. The imagery of the winter and summer houses being struck down together highlights the futility of human attempts to build and preserve material wealth and comfort in the face of divine judgment and the inexorable passage of time. The relevance of the reference to Amos 3:15 lies in its reinforcement of the poem's themes of decay, memory, and the futility of human efforts to preserve and control. It connects the personal and historical narrative of the poem to a broader biblical and moral context, highlighting the transient and fragile nature of human endeavors in the face of time and divine judgment.

In terms of structure, “Icehouse in Summer” is a single, continuous narrative with no stanza breaks, reflecting the seamless flow of memory and thought. The poem’s language is rich and evocative, employing vivid imagery and sensory details to draw the reader into its world. Nemerov’s use of enjambment and varied line lengths creates a natural rhythm that mirrors the process of remembering and reflecting.

Overall, “Icehouse in Summer” is a poignant meditation on the passage of time, the persistence of memory, and the inevitability of decay. Through the lens of a boy’s summer experience and the haunting memories of winter’s labor and loss, Nemerov explores how the past continually shapes and intrudes upon the present, highlighting the fragile and transient nature of human endeavors.

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