Close Reading Assignment: "Samuel Hearne in Wintertime"

"Samuel Hearne in Wintertime" is a poetic documentary of the undeclared mayhem of Canada's past. Newlove uses Samuel Hearne, a figure from the past, to capture the past in a true and genuine state. This poem expresses ideas of truth, loss, isolation, feelings of defeat, and internal conflict. Throughout the entire piece, the author is deromanticizing, demythologizing and debunking both Samuel Hearne and early northern exploration. The clipped terse epigram, clipped syntax, the style of …

…spears are a symbolic representation of two victims. There is a connection between the fourth and fifth section. It is the idea of "wanting to know" and "never to know" . The speaker of the poem approaches the subject with anger and then compassion, which in turn reaches the reader on an emotional level. Newlove's writing is full of reverberation. Samuel Hearne in Wintertime is a piece complex in its simplicity and generates reader response artfully.