News of the weather affects the speaker. There is two feet of snow “in just as many days.” Her “stubborn” pipes and “house of skin like straw” give us the sense that she is cold when the weather is cold. Her “morning’s cup” and “bowl of lentils” are set up as a humble comfort against her “sullen senses.” Two feet of snow in two days is big news (at least in our part of the world), and the speaker’s comfort relies, in part, on the weather. In this respect, she is “the News” because she is a person affected by the news.

By extension, we are all “the News.” The poem has a sly way of involving us in what goes on outside our doors. Weather is news, and of course, we are affected by the weather. When we hear we’ll have two feet of snow, we know we’ll be cooped up for a couple days while the world outside slows way down. Except the world doesn’t really slow down. When the poem’s speaker asks, “What news of war?” she reminds us war hasn’t stopped just because her neighborhood is covered in snow. She sees “A torso/ in rictus of ash” reflected in the white snowflakes and her cold hands. The world keeps going—beautiful and horrible—and we are implicated in all of what goes on outside. If the weather is there for us, the war is there for us, too.

And when the poem opens its door to the wider world, we get a closer look inside. Maybe what we read as comfort is a plea. Maybe carrots “from the bin” imply a dangerous lack of food. The woolen sock and mittens might be an impotent buffer against hypothermia. “White engulfs the color of my hands,” says the speaker. It’s possible there is real danger. The weather is a metaphor for our insularity, but it’s a generous metaphor because it understands we are both agents and victims of the frightening, controlless world. It allows that somewhere there is a blizzard, or an earthquake, or a hurricane, or a flood where people just like us, where we, become the news.

– The Editors