Diane Glancy cautions that passivity toward our descendants negates our sense of self, thus creating a contaminated identity. Symbolizing the degradation of the pure into the polluted, Glancy utilizes “snow and mud” to explore our relationship to family in her poem “Without Title: for my Father who lived without ceremony.” Narrating episodes of her Native American family, the speaker “[remembers] the animal tracks of [her father’s] car backing out the drive in snow and mud…” Wrestling between the clarity of idealism and a quagmire of reality, “snow and mud” emulates the guilt derived from remembering versus acting. Acknowledging that snow falls to the ground, Glancy delineates Father’s fallen grace, evoking a lost angelic stature. Although