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Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood
Or so the story’s told.
We open up to a bleak tableau. The poet recounts a tale he has heard, of six persons caught together in the grip of a severe winter. Each of them probably had a single stick of wood.
Note the poet’s use of the word ‘humans’; he wants to draw attention to the gathering as specific individuals, rather than as a collective group. They were ‘trapped by happenstance’ implying no escape from a situation created by chance. The adjectives ‘dark’ and ‘bitter’ describing the cold add to the ominous feeling.
The Cold Within: About the poem
Irish American poet, James Patrick Kinney uses his poetic parable, ‘The Cold Within’ to illustrate the folly of falling prey to discrimination that shortchanges our own humanity.
Written in the 1960s- during the African American Civil Rights movement (1954-1968) , Kinney was outraged by inhuman discriminatory attitudes at the time and wrote this poem to prompt some serious soul searching. How often are we wise enough to rise above our egos? How foolish are we when we give in to our prejudices? Its message is relevant even today, when we face divisive outlooks in the world that lead to hatred and violence. The poem is a reminder to overcome our personal demons and be open to the wisdom of an egalitarian view – an attitude where everyone is considered equal in worth.
Kinney’s narrative poem tells a story to protest against bigotry and racism. The piece comprises of 8 quatrains — 4 lines per stanza with an approximate abcb end rhyme scheme. ‘The Cold Within‘ uses simple language and structure to ensure the message is not diluted. Given the delicate subject matter, note Kinney’s skillful use of visual imagery to engage the reader through:
The delivery too is straightforward — no fancy words or meandering metaphors. We see allegories in the wood logs which can be seen to represent a person’s abilities and resources; while the fire itself symbolizes the common good. Another language device used by Kinney is Personification — where you give personal characteristics to something non-human. He does it with Death — by speaking of Death having cold hands.
Kinney does not preach; he wants the reader to draw inferences from the visual and symbolical cues that he gives each character to arrive at a conclusion — the futility of exclusion.
The original citation of the poem The Cold Within is unavailable, but a letter from Kinney’s widow to an advice column tracks the interesting story behind its distribution. It seems that Kinney submitted the poem to many publications but it was rejected as being “too controversial for the time”. Still the poem with its compelling message spread quietly — shared in gatherings, over the radio and other informal channels. Somewhere in this, the authorship of James Patrick Kinney was lost and for a few decades, the source was cited as ‘Anonymous’. Kinney’s wife and son however brought his contribution to light. In the early 2000s, the Liguorian (an American based Catholic magazine) became the first commercial publication to publish this poem while correctly accrediting the author.