The Snowflake Which Is Now and Hence Forever Essay Questions

What do you think is the poet's main concern in this poem?

MacLeish seems to vacillate between his certainty that all beings ultimately disappear, and his longing for recognition, reverence and remembrance after he dies. He uses familiar images like the snowflake and salmon to guide the reader to what seem like permanent fixtures in our world, only to show how these beings are just as transient as us, ultimately blending into their surroundings. And yet, as the title suggests, because the meaning of the snowflake will always stay in our minds, because there will always be winter, because people like MacLeish or Birdseye leave behind their creations, MacLeish shows, in different ways, how beings and phenomena live on.

Why does MacLeish choose fish as a figurative image?

Fish are very familiar to us, and yet they are elusive, slippery, and live most of their life underwater, out of human view. We acknowledge them as a common feature of our civilization, but as MacLeish points out, they are visible, and then gone, and we don't make much of their death. Yet, we often think of fish as belonging to perpetuity—functioning within the everlasting fabric of nature—as well as living a vibrant, active life. Still, the life of each fish is not treated with significance, and once the salmon's leap is over, it returns to the invisible depths, only to be fished up and eaten as if its unique life never occurred. The salmon's reality, like that of many other creatures, underpins MacLeish's exploration of human transience and how we reconcile wanting to make an impact with the knowledge that we'll eventually disappear.