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Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, 1968-1998
by
Linda Pastan
This volume brings together new work along with poems gathered from nine previous collections. When Linda Pastan's first book was published in 1971, the Jerusalem Post wrote, she "in large measure fulfilled Emerson's dream -- the revelation of 'the miraculous in the common.'" Since then, Pastan has continued to explore the complexities, passion, and dangers under the surfa...more
Hardcover, 301 pages
Published
April 1st 1998
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published 1998)
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Linda Pastan is such a versatile poet. At times, her poetry is uplifting, encouraging, and simply lovely. But it can also be so sad that it breaks your heart.
There is no denying that her poetry is beautiful. I read that she revises her poems one hundred times, and I believe it, because these poems constantly astonish us in both imagery and in language. One example is “Proclamation at a Birth,” which is the first poem of hers that I ever came across, the poem that led me to buy this book. I first...more
There is no denying that her poetry is beautiful. I read that she revises her poems one hundred times, and I believe it, because these poems constantly astonish us in both imagery and in language. One example is “Proclamation at a Birth,” which is the first poem of hers that I ever came across, the poem that led me to buy this book. I first...more
Well done, surely, but in my opinion a bit of a yawner.
Linda Pastan takes ordinary human relations and ordinary life and makes them, well, ordinary. Her topics are marriage and family, death, and poetry. In imagery, she likes flowers and the natural world, and bread.
The poems are tender and honest, but for me they lack surprise and linguistic interest. It's kind of sad when she goes for surprise and misses ("High Summer," and "There is a Figure in Every Landscape," for example.) I do understand...more
Linda Pastan takes ordinary human relations and ordinary life and makes them, well, ordinary. Her topics are marriage and family, death, and poetry. In imagery, she likes flowers and the natural world, and bread.
The poems are tender and honest, but for me they lack surprise and linguistic interest. It's kind of sad when she goes for surprise and misses ("High Summer," and "There is a Figure in Every Landscape," for example.) I do understand...more
Oh, how I love the poetry of Linda Pastan. Her first poem that I ever read was "Marks" in my college poetry textbook, and this poem reappears in this collection. What amazes me about these poems are their simplicity and elegance. I like how Pastan reuses words and images throughout all her poems (snow, Eden, alphabets, curving roads). Her poems never get old or seem repetitive, though. This is my favorite poetry book I've read all summer in 2009.
Thirty years of poems. This was almost like reading an unintentional novel, following the arc of Linda Pastan's life not as a sequence of actual events but as a sequence of growth, of changing moods, of love and lust and motherhood and hospice. Her words are simple; her thoughts are deep. Her clarity is stunning. As a man, I appreciated the female point of view that drew me in rather than pushing me away.
Linda Pastan is my favorite poet. I had never heard of her when I ended up with a free copy of this book over a decade ago. I immediately loved it, and I've read it over and over again. I love how this collection takes you through the different periods of her life - having children, middle age, grieving her parents, etc. I read an interview with her where she said that she edits each poem over 100 times. Amazing.
The recent poems that begin this collection, with the exception of the title poem, written for a painting, illustrate what every poet or writer dreads: the falling off from earlier excellence, as a factor of age. One wishes Pastan had confined this volume to selections from her previous works and eliminated the inferior later poems. Carnival Evening could have simply set the stage.
This was the collection of poetry that I grew up to...the collection where I learned to love poetry and to love through poetry. It was the book that I wrote college essays about... the book that taught me that words can do something emotive like nothing else can.
This isn't a book to sit down and read straight through as it is a collection of several books of poems. I first read her "The Imperfect Paradise" and have been enjoying her poetry ever since.
Linda Pastan is a really good poet. Most of the pieces here have little moments of beauty and simplicity which stay. I'm really happy I read this though I'm not sure I'll return to it often-
Short, well crafted, usually free-verse poems. I think a slimmer selection would have had more impact, as the subjects and metaphors began to become familiar and expected.
Wow 30 years worth of poetry and I read it all! Easy to digest, though I did learn a few new words. I know she likes cows, flowers, books, and something about Eden she keeps referring to. Best poems I think are water wheel and overture. Something about trees is also very interesting in its form.
Pastan is like a feminine version of William Stafford.
I liked this collection overall. It was my first introduction to Pastan. Her work reminded me somewhat of Maxine Kumin, but by the end, I felt like Kumin avoided the obviousness that Pastan dips into, especially in her later poems. I feel that her earlier poems (from 1968 through the 1970s) were stronger.
Pastan's brilliance shines through, as always.
Love this collection and will definitely return to it when I'm in the mood for more poetry. Read about 170 pages so far.
Reason why I love poetry - the ability to find the perfect metaphor to explain seemingly unexplainable feelings.
I read this for a class a few years ago. It was my first introduction to Pastan. I remember her.
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“What We Want
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.”
—
8 people liked it
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.”
“Despite the enormous evening sky
spreading over most of the canvas,
its moon no more
than a tarnished coin, dull and flat,
in a devalued currency;
despite the trees, so dark themselves,
stretching upward like supplicants,
utterly leafless; despite what could be
a face, rinsed of feeling, aimed
in their direction,
the two small figures
at the bottom of this picture glow
bravely in their carnival clothes,
as if the whole darkening world
were dimming its lights for a party.”
—
1 person liked it
More quotes…
spreading over most of the canvas,
its moon no more
than a tarnished coin, dull and flat,
in a devalued currency;
despite the trees, so dark themselves,
stretching upward like supplicants,
utterly leafless; despite what could be
a face, rinsed of feeling, aimed
in their direction,
the two small figures
at the bottom of this picture glow
bravely in their carnival clothes,
as if the whole darkening world
were dimming its lights for a party.”
