Weather in poetry

Emily Dickinson

Dickinson wrote weather constantly. Some highlights:

• "There came a Wind like a Bugle" — probably about a tornado approach.
• "A narrow Wind complains all day" — the sound of wind through eaves.
• "The Sky is low — the Clouds are mean" — flat gray sky.
• Repeated imagery of storms, wind, weather-as-emotion.
• Amherst, Massachusetts landscape.
• Modern chase-related poetry frequently references her.

Ted Kooser

Nebraska poet laureate. Great Plains weather is his territory.

• "After Rain" — sensory landscape.
• "Weather" — brief but evocative.
• "Winter Morning" — cold air, low sun.
• Understated, precise, plainspoken.
• Farm and small-town setting.
• Read by chasers who spend seasons in his territory.

Wallace Stevens

Insurance executive and modernist master. Weather as metaphysical.

• "The Snow Man" — cold vision.
• "Anecdote of the Jar" — placing weather in landscape.
• "Sunday Morning" — light and season.
• "The Idea of Order at Key West" — beach weather.
• Weather as inescapable presence.

Robert Frost

• "Storm Fear" — a family confronts a snowstorm.
• "After Apple-Picking" — autumn cold.
• "Once by the Pacific" — coastal storm.
• "Fire and Ice" — apocalyptic imagery.
• "The Rain to the Wind Said" — weather dialogue.
• New England setting.

Modern voices

International voices

Weather in classical poetry

• Homer — storm gods and weather divine.
• Virgil — pastoral weather in Georgics.
• Chaucer — Canterbury Tales weather.
• Shakespeare — King Lear's storm scene.
• Milton — Paradise Lost cosmic weather.
• Wordsworth — Lake District rainstorms.
• Coleridge — Ancient Mariner's storms.
• Keats — Ode to a Nightingale seasons.

Specific tornado poems

• Ted Kooser has written explicitly about tornadoes.
• Various regional poets from Tornado Alley have too.
• Amateur poetry proliferates in survivor communities.
• Some tornadoes have inspired multiple poems (Joplin especially).
• Post-tornado literary anthologies exist.
• Nashville 2020 tornado inspired local poetry.

Storm as metaphor

• Grief.
• Rage.
• Sexual passion.
• Political upheaval.
• Divine wrath.
• Renewal.
• Loss of innocence.
• The passage of time.
• Personal transformation.
• The metaphors go endlessly.

For chasers

• Poetry gives you language for what you've seen.
• Reading poetry improves your prose.
• Some chasers write poetry from their experience.
• The community publishes poetry occasionally.
• Poetry preserves emotional truth of chase experience.
• Reading poetry off-season helps decompress.

Poetry for education

• Weather poems for classrooms across grades.
• Connect science to art.
• Get kids to write their own weather poetry.
• Discuss metaphor and language.
• Pair with cloud identification or weather map lessons.
• Museum of Natural History programs sometimes include poetry.

Where to find weather poetry

• Poetry Foundation website — searchable.
• Poets.org.
• Library of Congress poetry archive.
• Local literary journals.
• Small press anthologies.
• Individual poets' collections.
• YouTube: poets reading their own work.
• Podcasts of poetry.

Learn more

• Tornadoes in fiction
• Best tornado books
• Tornado podcasts and audio
• Weather in famous paintings