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A Comparison

In England currently the cold weather is big news and is drawing comparisons to the cold, brutal winter of 1962-1963, which is relevant to this blog in so many ways. In fact, in the Daily Mail article "Will it be even colder than the winter of 1962-3? Big freeze returns tomorrow... and it's going to last for a MONTH" by Paul Bentley, Becky Barrow and Sophie Freeman (how many Britons does it take to write about the weather?), the boxed off text "The Great Freeze of 1962/63" seems a paraphrase of Sylvia Plath's prose piece "Snow Blitz." One of my favorite things to do is review the Times and Guardian microfilm from Boxing Day through early February to try to get a sense of what he media coverage was saying about the weather conditions. That the winter is still memorable speaks to its severity.

Unfortunately we do not know the date "Snow Blitz" was written, but in all likelihood it was written before she completed what would be called "Ocean 1212-W." Another prose piece Plath wrote at this time was "America! America!," which was if memory serves a commissioned piece by Punch. The recently released audio track of Plath's review of Donald Hall's Contemporary American Poetry anthology for "New Comment" on the BBC is another excellent example of her prose writing; and in a different genre to the previously mentioned works.

One thing is for sure, Plath's late prose - like her last poems - was amongst her finest writing... And I do not think Alvarez was wrong when on 17 February he wrote, "[t]he loss to literature is inestimable."

Thanks to Kim for the link!
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