Linda Pastan has been lauded for her attention to detail and compared to Emily Dickinson, and her poetry readings are delightful.
Simple yet profound
In Linda Pastan’s poem, “Muse: After Reading Rilke,” the speaker begins by making a self-effacing confession, “No angel speaks to me.” But by the end of the poem, the speaker’s lack has yet produced a profound realization, “Along the indifferent corridors / of space, angels could be hiding.”
Many of Pastan’s poems follow this humble equation that from nothing or little comes much to those who look closely and perceive. Pastan’s poems are based on close observation that results often in profound expressions of truth from the human heart.
Compared to Dickinson
The Hudson Review said of Pastan’s style, “a poet of a hundred small delights, celebrations, responses, satisfactions, pleasures.” The same has been observed about the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Both poets made careers of paying attention to the domestic scene, a place often overlooked by writers of all stripes.
Young writers are often encouraged to travel widely and look beyond the narrow wall of home and hearth, but Pastan and Dickinson are proof that great poetry can be gathered if the poet simply grows where she is planted.
Homemade dessert every night
Pastan put her poetry-writing career on hold for many years after she married and started a family. Often called sacrifice, this strategy has paid off for this poet. About her sabbatical from writing, she explains:
I was a product of the '50s -- what I called the perfectly polished floor syndrome. I had to have a homemade dessert on the table for my husband every night, and this was when I was in college I was married and then in graduate school. And I felt that I couldn't be the perfect wife and mother that I was expected to be, and commit myself to something as serious as my poetry, and I wasn't going to do that half-heartedly. It was all or nothing. And I stopped writing for almost ten years, and I was very unhappy about it during those years. And my husband finally said he was tired of hearing what a good poet I would have been if I hadn't gotten married. Let's do something about it.
They obviously did something about it quite well. After publishing some fifteen collections of her poems, Linda Pastan has earned many awards for her poetry, including the Dylan Thomas Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Di Castagnola Award (Poetry Society of America), the Bess Hokin Prize (Poetry Magazine), the Maurice English Award, the Charity Randall Citation of the International Poetry Forum, and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Not reclusive
Pastan was also honored with a Radcliffe College Distinguished Alumnae Award. Her collections of poetry, PM/AM and Carnival Evening, were nominated for the National Book Award, and The Imperfect Paradise was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Unlike Dickinson, Pastan did not dedicate herself to reclusiveness; Pastan has given many poetry readings, and she served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995. She also taught at Breadloaf Writers Conference for twenty years. The Washington Post describes Pastan as,“one of the real treasures in poetry of our time.”
A Bronx girl
Born in 1932 in the Bronx to a Jewish family, Pastan completed her undergraduate degree at Radcliffe College and then earned an M.A. at Brandeis University. Pastan currently lives in Potomac, Maryland.
Hearing Linda Pastan reading her poems is a delightful experience:
- Linda Pastan poetry reading Library of Congress Webcast
- Linda Pastan poetry reading at the Beall Poetry Festival
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