Night Room

In this book-length poem, W. H. New uses the metaphor of Snowman to represent the alternative self, the alter-ego, the doppelganger. Here we encounter the cold version of the warm person.

Throughout this book, the narrative voice searches for the intrinsic harmony that lies within each individual. New suggests that our fear of anarchy causes us to create rigid boundaries within which we attempt to find order. Yet ironically it is the disorderliness of the human spirit and the natural world, which alone can save us from isolation and despair. Freedom lies in our ability to balance our inner needs and desires with those external forces which oppose our deepest longings—forces imposed upon us by the very nature of our industrialized world.

Night Room explores the sometimes surreal world of isolation and paralytic despair, the delay between observation and action. Rich in image and painfully exact, these poems reverberate with a wry humour, reaching finally towards the balance of musical composition.