Peter Lattu

A Look at Poems by Linda Pastan

Harold Bloom, in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, bemoans the state of modern poetry and literary criticism. Others, more recently, continue to find gloom amidst contemporary poetry offerings. They haven’t discovered Linda Pastan.

In her recent book, Queen of a Rainy Country, the poems sparkle. “Snowed In” echoes Carl Sandburg with “soft white paws under/ the door of winter”. “Snowdrops” is brilliant. It’s a short poem that captures the essence of snowdrops and their role in “presiding/ over the slow/ death of winter”. Indeed, snowdrops are the first sign of spring among snowdrifts, of life after winter’s chill.

In an earlier book, The Last Uncle, “The Months” catches a sense of each month, each change, each season in the natural cycle of the year.
Pastan often finds just the right words to describe the moment: in “The Crossing” she awakes “to the small applause/ of rain”. “The Answering Machine” brings a friend’s voice persisting after death. Nature and death are cheated by a machine. “The Last Uncle” neatly conjures the Janus face of generations as the door closes behind him.

Carnival Evening is a selection of poems from thirty years of Pastan’s literary life, 1968 to 1999. It’s a rich offering. “A Craving for Salt” casts a new and different light on the story of Lot’s wife: she turned back because “what she left behind/ was simply everything”. In “Still Life”, Pastan favors the French phrase ‘nature morte’ which reflects that “life is less… without the actual taste/ of a pear on the tongue”. In “You are Odysseus”, she perhaps sums up her years of writing by concluding “only my weaving is real”.

In Contemporary American Woman Poets, Andrea Adolph puts a glass ceiling above Linda Pastan as a poet. Adolph notes that she is concerned with the “everyday” and writes of a “woman’s world”. Adolph finds that Pastan’s poetry has a “distinctly female sensuality”. While much of this criticism may be true, Linda Pastan doesn’t deserve to be compartmentalized in this way. Her work over the past forty years deserves to be read and appreciated regardless of her gender.

{Written by Peter Lattu}