Blizzard

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.