A few days ago Linda Pastan died. I discovered her collection of poetry Aspects of Eve, on the shelves of the 800s in the Kutztown University Library in the early 1990s. I sat on the floor and read it all, memorizing "Mini Blues," which I carry inside of me like a bell that sounds in the outcast moments of my life. When I felt lost or sad, or not knowing what I was doing at college (I was a fine art major taking creative writing classes and was in a constant state of beloved melancholy), I returned to that spot on the floor of the library and grounded myself with her poems. The book was always there for me the way poetry is, the way we expect it to be. It was there in the same way we assume the poets we love will be alive and writing, keeping up their rituals, carrying their notebooks everywhere, giving readings.
In the past few months I began re-reading Linda's poems, first with the collection Carnival Evening. I read a few poems each morning, the same way you might allow yourself a few chocolates from a fancy sampler. Every poem was delicious, activating, oxygenating.
I found her email, and sent her a letter of thanks. It was time. I wasn't sure how old she was, but did it matter? We owe our mentors, especially the ones who don't know they have helped guide us. We owe them our sincere and specific gratitude. She replied:
Thanks so much for your generous email! Sometimes I forget that there are actual people out there, reading my poems!
Her reply came within a day. I was surprised and delighted by it. It made me feel better about poets, and the poetry world, which I have distanced myself from in the past few years. I have been reading, and writing, but quietly. Hermetically.
I purchased copies of her older books, and her newest book,
Almost an Elegy. I shared poems with my friend Maggie, who then shared a video of Linda giving a
reading a few months ago. Her reading is elegant and natural, with an intention to the order of the poems, and she talks at the end about submitting work to magazines in a way that gave me some hope. I still have the reading open in the tabs on my browser. It's been up for weeks, there for me when I need to hear her words in her voice. A gift.
When reading "Away," from her newest collection, I recognized a symbolic connection to her poem "Mini Blues," from Aspects of Eve. It felt like the joy in discovering a tadpole, or a fossil of a shell, from my childhood spent exploring in the woods. Here was an evolutionary connection, a whisper sent through a very long telephone line. She was a master of metaphor, and of condensing and paring down to the essentials to expose feeling:
Mini Blues
Like a dinghy
I always lag
behind, awash
in somebody else's wake.
Or I answer
the low call
of the foghorn,
only to find
that what it meant
was keep away.
- Linda Pastan, from Aspects of Eve
Away
In the small craft
that is my body, I am
ready to take off
from the shore,
waving goodbye
to the faces
I've loved,
not sad exactly
but anxious
to catch
the outgoing
tide.
- Linda Pastan, from Almost an Elegy
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