 |
|
| Linda Pastan | |
Poet Linda Pastan, "who drew inspiration from seemingly ordinary events--a children's carpool, a high school reunion, the hurried sunset of a late fall evening--and distilled them into lines of concentrated beauty," died January 30, the Washington Post reported. She was 90.
Pastan began writing poetry in adolescence and won a collegiate poetry contest, sponsored by Mademoiselle magazine, during her senior year at Radcliffe. She embarked on her career as a poet relatively late, however, publishing her first collection, A Perfect Circle of Sun (1971), the year before she turned 40.
Over the next half-century, Pastan published several poetry collections, including two--PM/AM (1982) and Carnival Evening (1998)--that were finalists for the National Book Award. In 2003, she received the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her most recent work, Almost an Elegy, was published last year.
Pastan's other books include A Fraction of Darkness (1985), The Imperfect Paradise (1988), Heroes in Disguise (1991), An Early Afterlife (1995), The Last Uncle (2001), Queen of a Rainy Country: Poems (2006), Traveling Light: Poems (2011), Insomnia: Poems (2015) and A Dog Runs Through It (2018).
Throughout her writing career, Pastan "experienced what she described as an inescapable 'impulse to condense.' She at times drew from biblical sources, particularly the figure of Eve, as well as the epics of Homer. But she was perhaps best known for poems that captured in short, spare lines the unnoticed emotional freight in everyday occurrences," the Post noted.
As Maryland's poet laureate from 1991 to 1995, Pastan declined to write official poems for grand occasions. Her goal, she told the Post at the time, was "just to make poetry a little more visible to people, so they'll perhaps be tempted to take a chance and read some themselves."
Author and Norton editor Jill Bialosky tweeted: "Honored to have published Linda Pastan’s last work and to have worked with her on many other volumes. A masterful poet who moved so many readers with transcendent poems about ordinary life. RIP dear Linda."
From the poem "Almost an Elegy":
You are becoming
transparent--a pane
of antiqued glass
flawed perhaps, though
you don't break.
You are a secret
whispered once
from mouth to ear
that nobody bothers
to tell.