Linda Pastan is the author of numerous books of poetry including Traveling Light (Norton & Co, 2011). Her fourteenth collection, Insomnia, is forthcoming. She has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, and in 2003 she won the Ruth Lilly prize for lifetime achievement.
Poetry
Jan/Feb 2015
Elegy
Our final dogwood leans over the forest floor offering berries to the birds, the squirrels. It’s a relic of the days when dogwoods flourished—creamy lace in April, spilled milk in […]
Writing in Code: Literature and the Genome
Winter 2006
Alphabet Song
Like a train made up of 26 boxcars,the alphabet drags such a heavy cargodown the tracks, such strange,compelling combinations that we are left breathless, admiringa world constructed of wordsand sentences […]
Poetry
Summer 2000
The Crossing
I wake to the small applause of rain, then sleep again and somewhere between dusk and dawn a curtain falls and rises. My dreams carry me on their shifting backs […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
43rd Anniversary
I am plotting our life again, here at the start of what must be its final act. I am choosing new scenery: antique rugs and clocks; new characters–even a dog […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
The Death of the Bee
The death of wild bee populations has become widespread. . . NEWS REPORT The biography of the bee is written in honey and is drawing to a close. Soon the […]
Poetry
Winter 1991
Guilt
Stepchildof the imagination,it roams the gardensour mothers planted,picking thorned rosesfor the bedsidesof the adulterers, watering tea leavesfor the cupsof bitterness that keep us sleeplessthrough the unforgivingnights.
Poetry
Winter 1991
Bed
In the confused nights, when I wakeshaken by dreams, sometimesI don’t know which bed I’m inin the long procession of beds that movelike Saints’ Day floats before my eyes. Look! […]
Poetry
Winter 1991
At Gettysburg
These fields can never besimply themselves. Their greenseems such a tender green,their contours so significantto the tourists who stare towards the far range of mountainsas if they are listeningto the […]
Poetry
Autumn 1989
The Happiest Day
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 […]
Poetry
Autumn 1989
An Old Song
How loyal our childhood demons are, growing old with us in the same house like servants who season the meat with bitterness, like jailers who rattle the keys that lock […]
Weekend Reads
At Gettysburg
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Spring 1991, Vol. XIII, No. 2 These fields can never be simply themselves. Their green seems such a tender green, their contours so significant […]