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Linda Pastan Biography

Linda Pastan (born May 27, 1932 in New York) is an American poet of Jewish background. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. She is known for writing short poems that address topics like family life, domesticity, motherhood, the female experience, aging, death, loss and the fear of loss, as well as the fragility of life and relationships. Her most recent collections of poetry include Insomnia, Traveling Light, and Queen of a Rainy Country.

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Linda Pastan Quotes

Evil is simply a grammatical error: a failure to leap the precipice between "he" and "I.

Errors, Evil, Empathy, Leap, Grammatical

I am tired of the litany of months, September October I am tired of the way the seasons keep changing, mimicking the seasons of the flesh which are real and finite.

Changing, Flesh, Real, Seasons, Tired, Way

Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open--that one and that--and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture. For life is continuous as long as they wait to be read--these inked paths opening into the future, page after page, every book its own receding horizon. And I hold them, one in each hand, a curious ballast weighing me here to earth.

Book, Broken, Hands, Inked, Long, Pasture

What we want is never simple.

Inspirational, Adversity, Simple

I regret the way pain has taught me nothing.

Pain, Regret, Taught, Way

Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut.

Eye, Broken, Way, Code, Seeing

I made a list of things I have to remember and a list of things I want to forget, but I see they are the same list.

Forget, List, Lists, Remember, See, Want

Spring is the shortest season.

Season, Seasons, Shortest, Spring

Grief is a circular staircase.

Circular, Grief, Staircase, Staircases

There are poems that are never written, that simply move across the mind like skywriting on a still day: slowly the first word drifts west, the last letters dissolve on the tongue, and what is left is the pure blue of insight, without cloud or comfort.

Across, Blue, Clouds, Letters, Moving, Slowly

I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]

Absence, Bed, Sheets, Shore, Would Be

What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book and these things bear our names - now they want us. But what we want appears in dreams, wearing disguises. We fall past, holding out our arms and in the morning our arms ache. We don't remember the dream, but the dream remembers us. It is there all day as an animal is there under the table, as the stars are there.

Ache, Dream, Holding, Morning, Room, Stars