Final answer:
The emotion tied to the feeling of coldness in the poem encompasses detachment, sadness, and introspection, reflecting both admiration for emotional distance and a personal struggle with numbness.
Step-by-step explanation:
The speaker in the poem associates the feeling of coldness with a range of emotions, including detachment, sadness, and perhaps reflective introspection. This emotional coldness is not merely physical but also represents the speaker's inner state, as seen in the use of phrases such as "fear-frozen" and expressions of tragic reaction to the environment.
The coldness experienced by the speaker and the other characters within the text is tied to their situations as well as their emotional responses to their circumstances, from the literal chill of the January waters off the Florida coast to the metaphorical coldness of the speaker's reaction to beautiful things. In the context provided, the speaker reveals a complicated relationship with coldness, seeing it as an admirable quality in photographers who must maintain an objective distance, but at the same time, acknowledging a personal struggle against becoming emotionally numb.
In an emotional sense, coldness is aligned with a form of resistance to the obvious beauty in life, a distancing from emotion that could be seen as a protective mechanism or perhaps a sign of weariness or disillusionment. For example, the speaker's musing over photographers implies a certain reverence for the ability to detach and focus on the art - "the intensity—or was it the coldness?—
of each photographer's good eye." Yet, in the context of an ice-cold star on a winter's night, the coldness translates into a metaphorical commentary on the speaker's own internalization of emotional distance, conveying feelings of loneliness or unrequited emotion.