POET

Linda Pastan (1932 - )

BIOGRAPHY

PASTAN, Linda (1932– ), was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. The problems her work deals with are familiar ones—loneliness and death—and in her early books Pastan’s control of her images was now and then uncertain, as in this lament at her inability to prevent her father’s death: “my father [is] running out upstairs, and me without a nickel /for the meter.” Later she became more successful at harmonizing her metaphors. Though known as a “domestic” poet who is fond of recording everyday happenings, she is at her best when writing elegiacally. PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (New York, 1982) reprints what Pastan wishes to save from her first four volumes; it was followed by A Fraction of Darkness (New York, 1985) and The Imperfect Paradise (New York, 1988).

from The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford UP. Copyright © Oxford UP.

In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle poetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on domestic life. After 10 years of raising a family, her husband urged her to return to poetry. Since the early 1970s, Pastan has prolifically produced quiet lyrics of marriage, parenting, and grief. She is interested in the anxieties that exist under the surface of everyday life.

Pastan served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995 and was on the staff of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for 20 years. Her PM/AM: New and Selected Poems and Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998 were finalists for the National Book Award, and The Imperfect Paradise was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She lives in Potomac, Maryland.

(Poetry Foundation, 2006)

POETRY
A Perfect Circle of Sun. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1971.
On the Way to the Zoo. Washington, D.C.: Dryad Press, 1975.
Aspects of Eve. New York: Liveright, 1975.
The Five Stages of Grief. New York: Norton, 1978.
Selected Poems. London: Murray, 1979.
Setting the Table. Washington, D.C.: Dryad Press, 1980.
Waiting for My Life. New York: Norton, 1981.
PM/AM: New and Selected Poems. New York: Norton, 1982.
A Fraction of Darkness. New York: Norton, 1985.
The Imperfect Paradise. New York: Norton, 1988.
Heroes in Disguise. New York: Norton, 1991.
An Early Afterlife. New York: Norton, 1995.
Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998. New York: Norton, 1998.
The Last Uncle: Poems. New York: Norton, 2002.
Queen of a Rainy Country: Poems. New York: Norton, 2006.