Linda Pastan
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.
“Because the night you asked me,the small scar of the quarter moonhad healed - the moon was whole again;because life seemed so short;because life stretched out before melike the halls of a nightmare;because I knew exactly what I wanted;because I knew exactly nothing;because I shed my childhood with my clothes -they both had years of wear in them;because your eyes were darker than my father's;because my father said I could do better;because I wanted badly to say no;because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;"because you were a door I could slam shut;because endings are written before beginnings;because I knew that after twenty yearsyou'd bring the plants inside for winterand make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;because I had free will;because everything is ordained;I said yes.”
“[But the constricted light,the year closing down on itself with allthe vacancies of January ahead, leave meunreconciled even to beauty.]When will you be coming back?”
“Despite the enormous evening sky spreading over most of the canvas, its moon no more than a tarnished coin, dull and flat, in a devalued currency; despite the trees, so dark themselves, stretching upward like supplicants, utterly leafless; despite what could be a face, rinsed of feeling, aimed in their direction, the two small figures at the bottom of this picture glow bravely in their carnival clothes, as if the whole darkening world were dimming its lights for a party.”
“What We WantWhat we wantis never simple.We move among the thingswe thought we wanted:a face, a room, an open bookand these things bear our names --now they want us.But what we want appearsin dreams, wearing disguises.We fall past,holding out our armsand in the morningour arms ache.We don't remember the dream,but the dream remembers us.It is there all dayas an animal is thereunder the table,as the stars are there.”
“I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]”
“I regret the way pain has taught me nothing.”
“Just looking at themI grow greedy, as if they werefreshly baked loaveswaiting on their shelvesto be broken open--that oneand that--and I make my choicein a mood of exalted luck,browsing among themlike a cow in sweetest pasture.For life is continuousas long as they waitto be read--these inked pathsopening into the future, pageafter page, every bookits own receding horizon.And I hold them, one in each hand,a curious ballast weighing mehere to earth.”