Blizzard

by Linda Pastan

1 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

In 1932, Linda Pastan was born to a Jewish family in the Bronx. She graduated from Radcliffe College and received an MA from Brandeis University.

She is the author of Traveling Light (W. W. Norton & Co., 2011); Queen of a Rainy Country (2006); The Last Uncle (2002); Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (1998), which was nominated for the National Book Award; An Early Afterlife (l995); Heroes In Disguise (1991), The Imperfect Paradise (1988), a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (l982), which was nominated for the National Book Award; The Five Stages of Grief (l978), and A Perfect Circle of Sun (l971).

About Pastan's The Five Stages of Grief, the poet May Sarton said, "It is about all her integrity that has made Linda Pastan such a rewarding poet. Nothing is here for effect. There is no self-pity, but in this new book she has reached down to a deeper layer and is letting the darkness in. These poems are full of foreboding and acceptance, a wry unsentimental acceptance of hard truth. They are valuable as signposts, and in the end, as arrivals. Pastan's signature is growth."

Among her many awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Dylan Thomas Award, the Di Castagnola Award, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Maurice English Award, the Charity Randall Citation, and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She was a recipient of a Radcliffe College Distinguished Alumnae Award.

From 1991 to 1995, she served as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, and was among the staff of the Breadloaf Writers Conference for twenty years. Linda Pastan lives in Potomac, Maryland.

Reviews

[Eunshawn]

In this poem, the narrator describes a blizzard. For structure, the author has arranged the phrases so that they’re short, making the poem cascade downward the whole time. This mimics the poem’s descriptions of the snow falling. The author also uses personification, saying that “the snow has forgotten how to stop” and saying that the snow is “shaping itself to the will of any object it touches.” This literary element, combined with the arrangement of the words on the page, culminate into the feeling and experience of the blizzard’s snow continually falling to the ground. For middle school students, the description of snow is a great way to show students a way to view a common occurrence (at least in the north). For students in the south, this poem can give them a glimpse into the snowfall that’s experienced in colder climates, which can be an intriguing topic for them. For writing, this piece can serve well for the “Memory Minutes” strategy for express/reflect. This piece acts as a sort of snapshot during the blizzard, with personification at the fore. In the same way, students can pick a particularly memorable moment and describe it using figurative language.