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Linda Pastan’s Followers (62)
Linda Pastan
Born
January 01, 1932
Website
Genre
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Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, 1968-1998
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published
1998
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3 editions
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Insomnia: Poems
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published
2015
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4 editions
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Traveling Light
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published
2011
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4 editions
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Queen of a Rainy Country
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published
2006
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3 editions
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Almost an Elegy: New and Later Selected Poems
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The Five Stages of Grief
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published
1978
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2 editions
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A Dog Runs Through It: Poems
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The Last Uncle
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published
2002
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6 editions
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Waiting for My Life
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published
1981
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3 editions
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PM/AM: New and Selected Poems
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published
1982
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5 editions
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“What We Want
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names --
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.”
― Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, 1968-1998
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names --
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.”
― Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, 1968-1998
“To be the other woman
is to be a season
that is always about to end,
when the air is flowered
with jasmine and peach,
and the weather day after day
is flawless,
and the forecast
is hurricane.”
― The Imperfect Paradise
is to be a season
that is always about to end,
when the air is flowered
with jasmine and peach,
and the weather day after day
is flawless,
and the forecast
is hurricane.”
― The Imperfect Paradise
“Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed - the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched out before me
like 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 years
you'd bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes.”
―
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed - the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched out before me
like 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 years
you'd bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes.”
―
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book Nook Cafe: Poetry -- 2021 | 430 | 66 | Dec 21, 2021 06:00PM | |
| Book Nook Cafe: Poetry ~~ 2023 | 507 | 72 | Dec 31, 2023 02:00PM |
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