Pastan, Linda 1981
Old woman,
enrobed in nothing
but faith
and strands of chiseled hair,
the living tree once hid
those gnarled limbs, that face
worn to its perfect bones
which has seen everything.
– Linda Pastan, “Donatello’s Magdalene”
Watch Linda Pastan speak at the 2011 National Book Festival:
Linda Pastan: 2011 National Book Festival
Poet Linda Pastan appears at the 2011 National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Linda Pastan is the author of many works of poetry, including “Carnival Evening,” “Queen of a Rainy Country,” “Waiting for My Life,” “PM/AM,” “The Last Uncle” and her latest work, “Traveling Light: Poems” (Norton), among others.
This landlocked house should grace a harbor:
its widow’s walk of grey pickets
surveys an inland sea
of grass; wind
breaks like surf against
its rough shingles.
– Linda Pastan, “Widow’s Walk, Somewhere Inland”
Read an interview with Linda Pastan from PBS:
Linda Pastan
GWEN IFILL: Now, a conversation with a prize-winning poet, and to arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown. JEFFREY BROWN: Flip through the 30 years worth of poetry in Linda Pastan’s collection, “Carnival Evening,” and you’ll find titles that sound a lot like life itself. A grandmother studying the face of “Anna at 18 Months” in the ’90s.
