Reviewed by:

• Below Freezing: Elegy for the Melting Planet by Donald Anderson
• Daryl W. Palmer

In memorable lines from “The Snow Man,” Wallace Stevens tells us, “One must have a mind of winter / To regard the frost. . . .” For many readers, the pronouncement is simply chilling, but some of us consider it a manifesto. We “regard” frost and embrace being, in the poet’s words, “cold a long time.” We treasure wintrum frod, the Old English phrase for the wisdom that comes from living through many winters. Because I am this sort of person, I have written about Muscovites and Englishmen in the Renaissance. I have tried to explain the cold in Hamlet. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter every year when the first snow comes. My brumal bona fi-des matter because I want to recommend Donald Anderson’s Below Freezing: Elegy for the Melting Planet to you as essential reading for winter minds trapped on a warming planet.

A gifted and accomplished writer of fiction and poetry, Anderson curates a life of reading about and living in the cold. In her eloquent foreword, Aritha van Herk rightly describes the book as a “collage-ledger,” creating a kind of “chiaroscuro.” In Below Freezing, Anderson’s stories of memory drift alongside boreal history (the Children’s Blizzard of 1888, the Air Florida plane crash in 1982), frigid facts (the summit temperature of Mt. Everest and the age of permafrost in Alaska), and a wide range of voices. We hear from Jimbo from Wreckmasters, reporters in the Denver Post, and Travis, who once ran out into the Alaskan cold on Christmas Eve. In striking ways, these voices jostle with those of Emily Dickinson, Robert Hayden, James Joyce, John Krakauer, Barry Lopez, and Jeanette Winterson, to name a few. Along the way, Anderson caches bits of cold classics such as Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” [End Page 295]

Through it all, Anderson never loses sight of his focus: here is a timely, perhaps belated, reckoning with climate change and memory. The book’s first page announces the focus with a precise juxta-position of a Denver Post article quantifying the reduction of Arctic sea ice and Anderson’s memories of mittens.

Readers with a special interest in the American West will find the book particularly appealing. With the opening paragraph, Anderson orients his project on the map of North America: “That mittens outwork gloves was a lesson learned, growing up in Montana— sure knowledge more aptly confirmed when an Air Force assignment landed me at a radar site in Alaska, three degrees north of the Arctic Circle” (3). Skipping back and forth between Butte, Montana, and the Arctic Circle, between recollections of family life and Air Force duties, Anderson assays Western memories of winter, holding them up in mittened hands. One need not have a mind of winter to appreciate the craftsmanship of the book and relish the accumulated wisdom.

In fact, it is Anderson’s memory work that creates arcs, large and minute, in the book as he recalls attaching his tongue to a galvanized elementary school post, falling behind his father while snowshoeing through a storm, his father making ice cream out of icicles, his daughter determined to drive the old Datsun on a bitter day, and Bill Secours having survived a Grizzly Bear attack. In memory after memory, Anderson’s wry voice brings the book to life, sometimes for what he writes, other times for how he has listened: “I asked [Secours] for advice to survive in the North. Don’t eat yellow snow, he advised, serious as a bear attack” (148).

The result is often bracing and beautiful, marked by wonder and wit, but never precious. Late in the book, readers may anticipate some sort of fanciful consolation as Anderson collects snowflake encomia: Winterson remarking on the wonder of snowflakes; a Zen proverb observing “No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place”; Thoreau remembering a particular snowflake and how it “reminded me...

审核人：

• 冰点以下：唐纳德·安德森（Donald Anderson）的《为地球熔化的悲歌》
• 达里尔·帕尔默（Daryl W.Palmer）

华莱士·史蒂文斯（Wallace Stevens）在《雪人》中令人难忘的台词中告诉我们：“一个人必须谨记冬天/要考虑霜冻。。。。” 对于许多读者而言，这句话简直令人不寒而栗，但我们中的一些人却将其视为宣言。用诗人的话来说，我们“视霜”并拥抱被“冷了很久”。我们珍惜wintrum frod，这是古老英语短语，代表了过着许多冬季生活所带来的智慧。因为我是这种人，所以我写了文艺复兴时期的莫斯科人和英国人的文章。我试图解释哈姆雷特的感冒。每年第一场雪降临时，我都会读劳拉·英格尔斯·怀尔德（Laura Ingalls Wilder）的《漫长的冬天》。我那残酷的慈善活动很重要，因为我想推荐唐纳德·安德森（Donald Anderson）的冰点之下：给您的《熔化星球的挽歌》，是困在变暖星球上的冬季人们必读的必读材料。

作为小说和诗歌的才华横溢的作家，安德森（Anderson）策划了阅读和生活在寒冷中的生活。阿里莎·范·赫克（Aritha van Herk）在雄辩的序言中正确地将这本书描述为“拼贴分类帐”，从而创造了一种“明暗对比”。在《冰雪之下》中，安德森的记忆故事与北方历史（1888年的儿童暴风雪，1982年的佛罗里达航空失事），冷酷的事实（珠穆朗玛峰的最高气温和阿拉斯加的永久冻土时代）一起漂移。声音范围。我们收到了Wreckmasters的Jimbo的来信，《丹佛邮报》的记者和特拉维斯（Travis），他们曾经在圣诞节前夕遇到阿拉斯加的寒冷。这些声音以惊人的方式与艾米莉·狄金森，罗伯特·海登，詹姆斯·乔伊斯，约翰·克拉考尔，巴里·洛佩兹和珍妮特·温特森等人争吵不休。一路走来，安德森（Anderson）收集了一些冷酷的经典作品，例如杰克·伦敦（Jack London）的《要生火》和罗伯特·弗罗斯特（Robert Frost）的《在一个下雪的夜晚停住树林》。[第295页]

通过这一切，安德森从不会忘记自己的关注点：这是一个及时的，也许是迟来的，考虑到了气候变化和记忆。该书的第一页以丹佛邮报文章的精确并列位置宣布了重点，量化了北极海冰减少和安德森对连指手套的记忆。

对美国西部特别感兴趣的读者会发现这本书特别有吸引力。在开头的段落中，安德森将他的项目定位在北美地图上：“连指手套是在蒙大拿州长大的，这是一个教训，可以肯定，当空军任务将我降落在阿拉斯加的雷达站点时，知识会得到更恰当的证实，北极圈以北三度”（3）。在回忆起家庭生活和空军职责之间，安德森在比尤特，蒙大拿州和北极圈之间来回跳来跳去，探寻西方对冬天的记忆，将它们握在手套里。一个人不需要冬天就可以欣赏这本书的技艺并享受积累的智慧。

实际上，正是安德森（Anderson）的记忆工作在书中创造了大而细微的弧度，因为他回忆起将舌头固定在镀锌的小学职位上，在暴风雪中hoe步时落在了父亲的身后，父亲用冰柱来制作冰淇淋。 ，他的女儿决定在艰苦的日子里开车赶老达特森（Datsun），而比尔·塞库尔斯（Bill Secours）幸免于灰熊的袭击。记忆中的回忆，安德森的苦涩的嗓音使这本书栩栩如生，有时是他写的东西，有时是他的聆听方式：“我向[Secours]寻求在北方生存的建议。他建议，不要吃黄雪，这很严重，像熊袭击一样”（148）。

其结果通常是令人振奋和美丽，以奇迹和机智为标志，但从未如此珍贵。在本书的后期，读者可能会预料到安德森收集雪花喜剧片时会有某种幻想的安慰：温特森（Winterson）评论了雪花奇观；禅宗谚语：“没有雪花落在错误的地方”；梭罗想起了一颗特别的雪花，以及它如何“提醒我...