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Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, 1968-1998
"Linda Pastan is one of America's truly fine poets working at the height of her powers." ― Michael Collier, Baltimore Sun This volume brings together new work along with poems gathered from nine previous collections. When Linda Pastan's first book was published in 1971, the Jerusalem Post wrote, she "in large measure fulfilled Emerson's dream ― the revelation of ‘the miraculous in the common.' " Since then Pastan has continued to explore the complexities, passion, and dangers under the surfaces of ordinary life. "Some critics point to Emily Dickinson when citing Pastan's lapidary style and metaphysical wit, a comparison that does justice to either poet when Pastan is at her best." ― Gettysburg Review "Pastan's unfailing mastery of her medium holds the darkness firmly in check." ― New York Times Book Review National Book Award finalist Linda Pastan was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1993.
- GenresPoetryFemale Authors
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
14 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
About the author
Linda Pastan
53 books62 followersIn 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
August 10, 2016
Some great poems in this book. Here are a few examples:
The Happiest Day
by Linda Pastan
It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn't believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn't even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day—
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere—
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then…
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.
Ethics
by Linda Pastan
In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum,
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn’t many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we’d opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half-imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter — the browns of earth,
though earth’s most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond the saving of children.
The Almanac of Last Things
by Linda Pastan
From the almanac of last things
I choose the spider lily
for the grace of its brief
blossom, though I myself
fear brevity,
but I choose The Song of Songs
because the flesh
of those pomegranates
has survived
all the frost of dogma.
I choose January with its chill
lessons of patience and despair--and
August, too sun-struck for lessons.
I choose a thimbleful of red wine
to make my heart race,
then another to help me
sleep. From the almanac
of last things I choose you,
as I have done before.
And I choose evening
because the light clinging
to the window
is at its most reflective
just as it is ready
to go out.
Marks
by Linda Pastan
My husband gives me an A
for last night's supper,
an incomplete for my ironing,
a B plus in bed.
My son says I am average,
an average mother, but if
I put my mind to it
I could improve.
My daughter believes
in Pass/Fail and tells me
I pass. Wait 'til they learn
I'm dropping out.
The Happiest Day
by Linda Pastan
It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn't believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn't even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day—
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere—
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then…
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.
Ethics
by Linda Pastan
In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum,
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn’t many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we’d opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half-imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter — the browns of earth,
though earth’s most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond the saving of children.
The Almanac of Last Things
by Linda Pastan
From the almanac of last things
I choose the spider lily
for the grace of its brief
blossom, though I myself
fear brevity,
but I choose The Song of Songs
because the flesh
of those pomegranates
has survived
all the frost of dogma.
I choose January with its chill
lessons of patience and despair--and
August, too sun-struck for lessons.
I choose a thimbleful of red wine
to make my heart race,
then another to help me
sleep. From the almanac
of last things I choose you,
as I have done before.
And I choose evening
because the light clinging
to the window
is at its most reflective
just as it is ready
to go out.
Marks
by Linda Pastan
My husband gives me an A
for last night's supper,
an incomplete for my ironing,
a B plus in bed.
My son says I am average,
an average mother, but if
I put my mind to it
I could improve.
My daughter believes
in Pass/Fail and tells me
I pass. Wait 'til they learn
I'm dropping out.
April 13, 2016
This combination of new (1998) poems as well as selected ones going back as far as 1968 was a National Book Award finalist.
I do not recall having read any particular poem of Pastan’s before. As with other great poets, I am impressed at how her words surround me and challenge me to peel them back, layer by layer, until I can appreciate their whole meaning. It is worth the effort.
Here are some poems or fragments that I suggest are characteristic of her work:
From The Imperfect Paradise
If God had stopped work after the fifth day
With Eden full of vegetables and fruits,
If oak and lilac held exclusive sway
Over a kingdom made of stems and roots,
If landscape were the genius of creation
And neither man nor serpent played a role
And God must look to wind for lamentation
And not to picture postcards of the soul,
Would he have rested on his bank of cloud
With nothing in the universe to lose,
Or would he hunger for a human crowd?
Which would a wise and just creator choose:
The green hosannas of a budding leaf
Or the strict contract between love and grief?
There Are Poems
There are poems
that are never written,
that simply move across
the mind
like skywriting
on a still day:
slowly the first word
drifts west,
the last letter dissolve
on the tongue,
and what is left
is the pure blue
of insight, without cloud
or comfort.
Wildflowers
You gave me dandelions
They took our lawn
By squatter’s rights ---
round suns rising
in April, soft moons
blowing away in June.
You gave me lady slippers,
bloodroot, milkweed,
trillium whose secret number
the children you gave me
tell. In the hierarchy
of flowers, the wild
rise on their stems
for naming.
Call them weeds.
I pick them as I
picked you,
for their fierce,
unruly joy.
I do not recall having read any particular poem of Pastan’s before. As with other great poets, I am impressed at how her words surround me and challenge me to peel them back, layer by layer, until I can appreciate their whole meaning. It is worth the effort.
Here are some poems or fragments that I suggest are characteristic of her work:
From The Imperfect Paradise
If God had stopped work after the fifth day
With Eden full of vegetables and fruits,
If oak and lilac held exclusive sway
Over a kingdom made of stems and roots,
If landscape were the genius of creation
And neither man nor serpent played a role
And God must look to wind for lamentation
And not to picture postcards of the soul,
Would he have rested on his bank of cloud
With nothing in the universe to lose,
Or would he hunger for a human crowd?
Which would a wise and just creator choose:
The green hosannas of a budding leaf
Or the strict contract between love and grief?
There Are Poems
There are poems
that are never written,
that simply move across
the mind
like skywriting
on a still day:
slowly the first word
drifts west,
the last letter dissolve
on the tongue,
and what is left
is the pure blue
of insight, without cloud
or comfort.
Wildflowers
You gave me dandelions
They took our lawn
By squatter’s rights ---
round suns rising
in April, soft moons
blowing away in June.
You gave me lady slippers,
bloodroot, milkweed,
trillium whose secret number
the children you gave me
tell. In the hierarchy
of flowers, the wild
rise on their stems
for naming.
Call them weeds.
I pick them as I
picked you,
for their fierce,
unruly joy.
January 10, 2010
Linda Pastan is my favorite poet. I had never heard of her when I ended up with a free copy of this book over a decade ago. I immediately loved it, and I've read it over and over again. I love how this collection takes you through the different periods of her life - having children, middle age, grieving her parents, etc. I read an interview with her where she said that she edits each poem over 100 times. Amazing.
December 2, 2015
Linda Pastan is a really good poet. Most of the pieces here have little moments of beauty and simplicity which stay. I'm really happy I read this though I'm not sure I'll return to it often-
UPDATE----Boy, was I wrong. Just a few years later and upon returning to this book, I find it full of jewels. How I mistook them for mere stones I have no idea, but Pastan is a treasure. She is the Poet Laureate of Maryland, but she is the poet laureate of nature and family, loss and silence.
UPDATE----Boy, was I wrong. Just a few years later and upon returning to this book, I find it full of jewels. How I mistook them for mere stones I have no idea, but Pastan is a treasure. She is the Poet Laureate of Maryland, but she is the poet laureate of nature and family, loss and silence.
July 19, 2012
This was the collection of poetry that I grew up to...the collection where I learned to love poetry and to love through poetry. It was the book that I wrote college essays about... the book that taught me that words can do something emotive like nothing else can.
July 27, 2015
My favorites included "RSVP Regrets Only"...an Oh Wow! poem and "Courbet's Still Life with Apples and Pomegranate" and several others. I'm still trying to decide if I will add it to my "permanent" collection.
July 30, 2009
Oh, how I love the poetry of Linda Pastan. Her first poem that I ever read was "Marks" in my college poetry textbook, and this poem reappears in this collection. What amazes me about these poems are their simplicity and elegance. I like how Pastan reuses words and images throughout all her poems (snow, Eden, alphabets, curving roads). Her poems never get old or seem repetitive, though. This is my favorite poetry book I've read all summer in 2009.
December 31, 2015
Thirty years of poems. This was almost like reading an unintentional novel, following the arc of Linda Pastan's life not as a sequence of actual events but as a sequence of growth, of changing moods, of love and lust and motherhood and hospice. Her words are simple; her thoughts are deep. Her clarity is stunning. As a man, I appreciated the female point of view that drew me in rather than pushing me away.
November 21, 2011
The recent poems that begin this collection, with the exception of the title poem, written for a painting, illustrate what every poet or writer dreads: the falling off from earlier excellence, as a factor of age. One wishes Pastan had confined this volume to selections from her previous works and eliminated the inferior later poems. Carnival Evening could have simply set the stage.
February 20, 2014
My favorite book by my favorite poet. Her poetry has both passion and domesticity, which is relatable to me! Her words are simple and surprising. I can't say how much I adore her and this book. In a fire, I would have to grab this one!
June 22, 2008
Reason why I love poetry - the ability to find the perfect metaphor to explain seemingly unexplainable feelings.
March 31, 2009
Love this collection and will definitely return to it when I'm in the mood for more poetry. Read about 170 pages so far.
March 30, 2009
Pastan is like a feminine version of William Stafford.
August 31, 2010
Short, well crafted, usually free-verse poems. I think a slimmer selection would have had more impact, as the subjects and metaphors began to become familiar and expected.
April 29, 2011
This isn't a book to sit down and read straight through as it is a collection of several books of poems. I first read her "The Imperfect Paradise" and have been enjoying her poetry ever since.
January 19, 2015
"Marks"
November 15, 2018
There’s a beguiling simplicity to Linda Pastan's poems, yet they sidestep the triteness of Billy Collins, for example. Though grounded and honest and open, the confessional in them is glancing, framed with metaphor and literary craft. I appreciated her wry perceptions about motherhood and marriage, but I was most deeply moved by her poems about losing her parents. My favorite poem of hers is still the one I was exposed to first: "To a Daughter Leaving Home."
November 11, 2007
Well done, surely, but in my opinion a bit of a yawner.
Linda Pastan takes ordinary human relations and ordinary life and makes them, well, ordinary. Her topics are marriage and family, death, and poetry. In imagery, she likes flowers and the natural world, and bread.
The poems are tender and honest, but for me they lack surprise and linguistic interest. It's kind of sad when she goes for surprise and misses ("High Summer," and "There is a Figure in Every Landscape," for example.) I do understand their appeal to some readers, but for me they were mostly banal.
I watched part of the movie "Pina" last night about the choreographer Pina Bausch, and one of the dancers says the most memorable thing Bausch ever said to her was "you have to get crazier." I had that feeling after reading these poems - Pastan needs to take a riskier leap now and then. I understand there are all kinds of poets and not all of us drip blood like Sharon Olds, but still, I would have appreciated a little more oomph.
Still, there were some poems I enjoyed, such as the title poem, an ekphrastic piece based on a painting by Henri Rousseau.
Carnival Evening was nominated for the National Book Award in poetry in 1998. (Gerald Stern's "This Time: New and Selected Poems" won.)
Here's a good example of her work from the Academy of American Poets (poets.org):
I Married You
I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.
I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.
You can read a couple of her poems on her Good Reads page too: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
Linda Pastan takes ordinary human relations and ordinary life and makes them, well, ordinary. Her topics are marriage and family, death, and poetry. In imagery, she likes flowers and the natural world, and bread.
The poems are tender and honest, but for me they lack surprise and linguistic interest. It's kind of sad when she goes for surprise and misses ("High Summer," and "There is a Figure in Every Landscape," for example.) I do understand their appeal to some readers, but for me they were mostly banal.
I watched part of the movie "Pina" last night about the choreographer Pina Bausch, and one of the dancers says the most memorable thing Bausch ever said to her was "you have to get crazier." I had that feeling after reading these poems - Pastan needs to take a riskier leap now and then. I understand there are all kinds of poets and not all of us drip blood like Sharon Olds, but still, I would have appreciated a little more oomph.
Still, there were some poems I enjoyed, such as the title poem, an ekphrastic piece based on a painting by Henri Rousseau.
Carnival Evening was nominated for the National Book Award in poetry in 1998. (Gerald Stern's "This Time: New and Selected Poems" won.)
Here's a good example of her work from the Academy of American Poets (poets.org):
I Married You
I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.
I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.
You can read a couple of her poems on her Good Reads page too: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
June 21, 2017
good quaint poems, but it doesnt hit any high standards
December 22, 2016
This collection gathers poems from the start of her career through nine volumes of her work. The poems often focus on finding the deeper emotions and philosophies that run through the everyday. There are also ruminations on art, on femininity, on death and loss. There are gorgeous moments, even among the most mundane images. An important collection following the career of this poet who continues to grow and evolve today.
September 21, 2014
I liked this collection overall. It was my first introduction to Pastan. Her work reminded me somewhat of Maxine Kumin, but by the end, I felt like Kumin avoided the obviousness that Pastan dips into, especially in her later poems. I feel that her earlier poems (from 1968 through the 1970s) were stronger.
November 28, 2012
Wow 30 years worth of poetry and I read it all! Easy to digest, though I did learn a few new words. I know she likes cows, flowers, books, and something about Eden she keeps referring to. Best poems I think are water wheel and overture. Something about trees is also very interesting in its form.
August 1, 2009
I read this for a class a few years ago. It was my first introduction to Pastan. I remember her.
April 18, 2020
Simple but enjoyable poems
August 3, 2017
Vital, unrelenting, sobering. Not for the faint of heart, as in...
COUSINS
We meet at funerals
every few years—another star
in the constellation of our family
put out—and even in that failing
light, we look completely
different, completely the same.
“What are you doing now?”
we ask each other, “How
have you been?” At these times
the past is more palpable
than our children waiting
at home or the wives and husbands tugging
at our sleeves. “Remember . . . ?”
we ask, “Remember the time . . . ?
And laughter is as painful
as if our ribs had secret
cracks in them.
Our childhoods remain
only in the sharp bones
of our noses, the shape
of our eyes, the way our genes call out
to each other in the high-pitched notes
that only kin can hear.
How much of memory
is imagination? And if loss
is an absence, why does it grow
so heavy? These are the questions
we mean when we ask: “Where
are you living now?” or
“How old is your youngest?
Sometimes I feel the grief
of these occasions swell
in me until I become
an instrument in which language rises
like music. But all
that the others can hear
is my strangled voice calling
“Goodbye . . .” calling
“Keep in touch . . .”
with the kind of sound
a bagpipe makes, its bellow heaving
and even its marching music funereal.
COUSINS
We meet at funerals
every few years—another star
in the constellation of our family
put out—and even in that failing
light, we look completely
different, completely the same.
“What are you doing now?”
we ask each other, “How
have you been?” At these times
the past is more palpable
than our children waiting
at home or the wives and husbands tugging
at our sleeves. “Remember . . . ?”
we ask, “Remember the time . . . ?
And laughter is as painful
as if our ribs had secret
cracks in them.
Our childhoods remain
only in the sharp bones
of our noses, the shape
of our eyes, the way our genes call out
to each other in the high-pitched notes
that only kin can hear.
How much of memory
is imagination? And if loss
is an absence, why does it grow
so heavy? These are the questions
we mean when we ask: “Where
are you living now?” or
“How old is your youngest?
Sometimes I feel the grief
of these occasions swell
in me until I become
an instrument in which language rises
like music. But all
that the others can hear
is my strangled voice calling
“Goodbye . . .” calling
“Keep in touch . . .”
with the kind of sound
a bagpipe makes, its bellow heaving
and even its marching music funereal.
February 12, 2020
Read back in 2010. Transferring over an old review from Library Thing.
Finished Carnival Evening with my poetry group, and in three years of reading poetry together, Linda Pastan is our favorite poet. Her poems are very accessible; however, they're anything but prosaic. I think you could probably open the book, point to a line at random, and find some little gem of a phrase. In one of my favorites, "blizzard" (138-39), for example, you'd find "chairs become/laps of snow" and "the whole/alphabet/of silence/falls out of the/sky." These are images you recognize immediately, even though she's phrased them in such an unexpected way, and there's delight in that recognition.
This collection offers a great survey of Pastan's career as a poet, and there are more than a few recurring themes, including death, Eve, marriage, children, and for whatever reason, snow. What's really remarkable, though, is the amazing quality of work throughout. Her words are gorgeous from beginning to end. It's tough to pick favorites, but here are five: "Anna at 18 Months" (28), "Voices" (93), "threads to be woven later" (108), "November" (136), and "To a Daughter Leaving Home" (196). I'll be reading more of Linda Pastan.
Finished Carnival Evening with my poetry group, and in three years of reading poetry together, Linda Pastan is our favorite poet. Her poems are very accessible; however, they're anything but prosaic. I think you could probably open the book, point to a line at random, and find some little gem of a phrase. In one of my favorites, "blizzard" (138-39), for example, you'd find "chairs become/laps of snow" and "the whole/alphabet/of silence/falls out of the/sky." These are images you recognize immediately, even though she's phrased them in such an unexpected way, and there's delight in that recognition.
This collection offers a great survey of Pastan's career as a poet, and there are more than a few recurring themes, including death, Eve, marriage, children, and for whatever reason, snow. What's really remarkable, though, is the amazing quality of work throughout. Her words are gorgeous from beginning to end. It's tough to pick favorites, but here are five: "Anna at 18 Months" (28), "Voices" (93), "threads to be woven later" (108), "November" (136), and "To a Daughter Leaving Home" (196). I'll be reading more of Linda Pastan.
March 19, 2024
A book I return to when I need to remember what poetry is supposed to achieve: capture, move, change the way I look at life, love, death and the natural world. A voice so still and composed and unpretentious, yet it is also like listening to your favourite (and wisest) aunt in one's backyard as she teaches us things we children may only ever experience or analyse when we are older, and when we do experience them, Pastan's voice enters our heads as an echo, even a guiding spirit.
Read
February 8, 2024I have savored this poetry collection over the months. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Linda Pastan's work. I am sorry that she is no longer with us to write more. I could never pick out a favorite poem. I underline almost all of her lines because they speak to me and anyone who has ever considered mortality. A MUST READ for anyone who writes poetry.
February 27, 2019
Fun to see her growth as a poet.
September 19, 2019
A beautiful, astounding, profound, insight book. A book whose poems made me feel older, yet younger at the same time; child-like, but also wise; melancholy and full of quiet ecstasy.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews