Blizzard

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1978

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical Context

Pastan reignited her career as a poet in the 1970s, a time in America characterized by changing social norms. Women and minority groups were fighting for equality and greater freedom. There were mass protests against the “police action” in Vietnam. Many upper- and middle-class Americans lived with greater prosperity and comfort than earlier generations. Pastan and her husband, for example, live on five acres in Maryland, enjoying relative safety and prosperity. At the same time, under the prosperous surface of everyday life, there was civil unrest at home and abroad. Many poets broached topics people felt were taboo. These topics included extreme violations of norms of the 1950s like drug use, sexual abuse, and radicalism to smaller taboos like admitting that a poet was unhappy with their choices or found life in America somewhat empty. For women, the Confessional movement was pioneered by poets like Sylvia Plath (whom Pastan had beat for her first poetry prize at Radcliff) who wrote about depression, the troubles of marriage and motherhood, and ultimately divorce. This was deemed “confessional” poetry; inherent in the very name is the suggestion of intimate information. Others such as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, and W.D. Snodgrass were deemed Confessional poets.

Poets who came after this first wave are classified as “Post-Confessional.” They often write about the same topics as those in the Confessional movement, however, these poets might take a less dramatic approach. Perhaps because the Confessional poets broke so much ground in their original push for transparency, the Post-Confessional poets seem tamer by comparison. Although Pastan began her career alongside Plath, she did not become prominent until more than a decade after Plath had entered the literary scene. Discussing topics of discontentment with social structures became less taboo for poets like Pastan by the time she began her career in earnest, and there was less of a sense that the simple choice of subject matter would be confrontational to the reader and the culture.

Literary Context: Romanticism and Post-Confessional Poets

“Blizzard” shares many characteristics with traditional poems of the Romantic movement, an earlier school of poetry that began in response to the Industrial Revolution. British poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote poetry that appealed to the masses, honored everyday people, and explored the importance of the individual. These poets wrote in the vernacular about common experiences and explored the importance of the imagination, the psyche, and the way that the human mind reacts to and is changed by interactions with nature. Wordsworth specifically focused on his experiences with nature, glorifying the natural world for itself and for its ability to help people experience transcendence. In America, the lead poet of the Romantic movement was Walt Whitman, who is also deemed the “father of American poetry.”

Although the Romantic movement had passed by the mid-1800s, it had lasting effects on later poetry. Romantic ideals are evident in poetry of the 20th century, specifically in its focus on individual experience, and the choice most poets make to write in more “common” vernacular language. Pastan claims she is influenced by poets like Wordsworth who also wrote about the way nature affected his imagination and mood. Pastan has also been compared to Emily Dickinson, who, like Pastan, wrote largely about domestic issues and shares the stylistic features of compression and shorter line lengths. The Romantic influence on Pastan’s work is clear, especially in her poems that dwell on nature.

Modern movements like those of the Confessional and Post-Confessional poets regularly employ Romantics traditions, holding individual experience to be important and worthy of examination. Much of Pastan’s poems explore issues that combine Romantic techniques and themes with subject matter more unique to Post-Confessional poets. Many of her pieces express a foreboding and an awareness of mortality. Perhaps because Pastan makes her home in a heavily wooded, rural area, her poems also employ plenty of nature imagery to convey this sense of unease. She often uses trees, animals, creeks, and the moon as metaphors for her feelings. Like many Romantic poets, she explores the relationship between nature and the human imagination. In “Love Poem,” for example, she compares her love to a creek after a thaw, with water moving dangerously fast, sweeping away twigs and debris out of its path. This poem combines her ambivalence toward marriage with the imagery of the natural world— a metaphor for the dangerous, overwhelming quality of love.

Literary Context: Pastan’s Oeuvre

Many of Pastan’s poems use nature imagery to explore her inner life. Specifically, Pastan uses imagery from winter in several works, such as “The Alphabet,” “Wind-Chill” “Sometimes in Winter,” and “Meditations by the Stove.” In these poems, however, winter seems more melancholy. In “Wind Chill,” for example, she writes, “The door of winter / is frozen shut,” and the “small leaves [clink] / in their coffins of ice” (Lines 13- 4). In “Winter Poem,” she wonders what her life would be like if she had not become a mother, and she expresses some regret for her domestic life. By comparison, “Blizzard” is more whimsical, focusing not as much on the cold, fearful quality of a snowstorm but rather on its ability to transform a landscape, evoke many imaginative possibilities, and ultimately lull the speaker to sleep. This trope is reminiscent of the Romantic movement, which often examined nature’s fecundity and its ability to awaken the imagination. “Blizzard” resembles another of Pastan’s poems, “Alphabet Song,” in which she compares the alphabet to a train with “26 boxcars” (Line 1) that people can “admire” (Line 5). In this poem, she writes that the “world [is] constructed of words / and sentences as much / as the sunsets and snowfalls” (Lines 6-8). This observation fills the speaker with delight and surprise and an appreciation for the “mysteries” (Line 9) of creation. “Alphabet Song” employs some of the same vocabulary as “Blizzard,” and, like “Blizzard,” it is focused more on examining the human imagination in response to nature than on nature as a metaphor for the speaker’s feelings.

At the same time, a reader who examines “Blizzard” in relation to Pastan’s other works might detect a darker turn in the final few lines. The speaker notes the snowstorm is like a “bear” (Line 33) that is “splitting the hive” (Line 34) and, ergo, letting the snow out like bees. This suggests that the snowstorm carries a potential danger. Then the speaker pulls the “comforter / of snow” (Lines 40-41) over her, allowing the “alphabet / of silence” (Lines 46-47) to fall around her. It is possible that the “comforter / of snow” (Lines 40 and 41) is something that brings the speaker greater peace, but it is also possible she is associating it with the covering of a grave. A person sleeping under snow would presumably be dead. The “alphabet / of silence” (Lines 46-47) could also suggest the silence of death, just as easily as the silence of a tranquil afternoon or evening. This interpretation might align with some of the themes of Pastan’s other works. At the same time, the word-choice of “comforter” (Line 40) suggests that whether the speaker is alluding to the grave or just to typical bedclothes, the tone of the final lines of the poem should be read as “comforting” rather than melancholy. Even if she is alluding subtly to death, it seems that the speaker is comparing death to sleep and suggesting that death is part of nature, just as sleeping is natural when a person is tired.