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Linda Pastan (b. 1932) served as the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 -- 1995. She lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and I have always been interested in her simply by virtue of geographical proximity. She has a deserved national rather than merely local reputation for readers of poetry. I have read some of Pastan's works before, but this is my first review of her poems here on Amazon. Pastan has published more than 12 volumes of poetry, including this relatively recent book, "Queen of a Rainy Country" (2006), which consists of approximately 65 short poems.
Pastan's poems are simple, restrained, and concise. Most of the poems are unrhymed in relatively short lines. They are non-academic and accessible. Many of the poems have an autobiographical tone and celebrate, on one level, every day life domesticity, love, and the pleasures of life in a wooded, peaceful, almost rural community.
The poems in this book are divided into five sections and involve several broad themes. The daughter of immigrants, Pastan meditates upon her past and upon the lives of her parents in the early poems in this collection, including "A Tourist at Ellis Island", "Maiden Name", and "To my Imaginary Siblings."
Married love constitutes a second major theme of these poems, as there are works celebrating both the 48th and the 50th wedding anniversaries. In the latter poem "50 years" Pastan reflects on her own mortality and that of her husband. In the earlier poem, "A Perilous Safety: Anniversary Letter", the poet reflects on the slow, steady nature of her happily married life:
"And so I must/learn continually,/or we both must learn,or/we both are learning still/that passion is more/than a conflagration./It can be a rage/of coals, each burning/in the blackened grate/with no brief promises/of flame, just this slow/and steady heat."
Many of the works in this collection are reflections on the art of poetry itself and its significance to Pastan's life. One of the best of these poems is "The life I didn't Lead". Pastan imagines the adventurous life she might have had, with journeys to places such as, Italy, Paris, Belgium, a life that might have included "poems from time to time". She puts these imagined lives to the side in favor of the life she led: "But the art that mattered/was the life led fully,/stanza by swollen stanza."
A series of poems are about the seasons and months of the years. Some of these poems are largely descriptive while others such as "The Death of the Self" suggest larger themes. Although she is not a political poet, Pastan addresses September 11, 2001, Abu Ghraib, and other topical subjects in a small number of poems.
Several poems in the collection have dark undertones as Pastan reflects on mortality and on the human capability for evil. With a little searching, I found Pastan reading her poem "Why are your Poems so Dark?" Pastan explains to her interlocutor:
"When God demanded light/he didn't banish darkness." Then, transforming the question into "Why are you sad so often?", the poet replies: "Ask the moon,/Ask what it has witnessed." The final, and title poem, of the book "A Rainy Country" strikes the same melancholy theme as the poet juxtaposes the simple activities of life, such as setting the breakfast table, with the every day cruelties reported in the news and through history. She concludes: "I am like the queen of a rainy country,/ powerless and grown old. Another morning/with its quaint obligations; newspaper,/bacon, grease, rattle of dishes and bones".
"Queen of a Rainy Country" is an introspective beautifully written collection of poems from late in the career of an important American poet.
