“I made a list of things I have to remember and a list of things I need to forget and then I see they are the same list.”
Linda Pastan
A New Poet
By Linda Pastan
Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don’t see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day – the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.
I have been reading Linda Pastan’s book The Five Stages of Grief. There are some remarkable poems in it and last week I spent some time reading more of her work on-line. She is one of those poets that the more I read the more I wonder why I haven’t run into her before this year. Every year I put together a little book of my favorite poems from the year and I think this year half of them could be Pastan.
Pastan was born the same year as my Mother, so it could be my affinity for her writing is in part because she speaks of things in ways that ring true to my inner ears, her words expressive in ways that are not unlike things my Mother said. Each generation wrestles with its own unique challenges and opportunities. My parents and Pastan grew up during the great depression. They learned to make do with what you had and that ability carried over into their inner life as well, not expecting or wanting too much of themselves or others. Pastan’s writing is private, she reveals just enough to draw the reader into her prose, but doesn’t get carried away in personal details that would be too revealing for either. She knows how to maintain a line of modesty in her poetry that serves to keep the reader thinking without veering into lurid thoughts all on their own.
Do you have poets that remind you of your parents? If yes, what emotions does that create for you when you read them?
Poetry
by Don Paterson
In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet’s early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it’s not love’s later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer’s — boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.
Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.
Fourteen Lines 