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Traveling Light
by
Linda Pastan
Linda Pastan meditates on themes of aging and memory, language and art in this moving collection, where she travels from the Thanksgiving table, a “palimpsest / with traces of the past / showing through,” to Japan, where she dreams in haiku. “Pastan . . . expresses a full range of the possibilities and potencies of the human, feminine voice” (Boston Globe).
from "In the For
...moreHardcover, 77 pages
Published
January 31st 2011
by W. W. Norton & Company
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“Traveling Light is elegantly humble, achieving lyricism through the skillful handling of plain speech...[Pastan's] poetry gropes toward self-illumination, taking us with her so that we, her readers, are never in the same place at the end of a poem as we are at the beginning.” --Prairie Schooner
“The poems in Traveling Light blend Pastan’s elegiac style with refreshing dashes of self-deprecating humor.” --The Washingtonian
“To read a new book by Pastan is to know again the comfort of sharp observa...more
“The poems in Traveling Light blend Pastan’s elegiac style with refreshing dashes of self-deprecating humor.” --The Washingtonian
“To read a new book by Pastan is to know again the comfort of sharp observa...more
Pastan's newest collection is her strongest yet. If you've never read this Ruth Lilly Prize winning poet who served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland then this is the ideal place to start. The book is divided into five thematic sections, the strongest of which are " Years After The Garden, "Somewhere In The World," and "Traveling Light." One of the reasons I liked reading this collection in a week or so is that the poems really form a whole, each one a voice to the chorale of the book....more
Traveling Light is one of the only collections of poetry that contains poems about nature that do not annoy me. Maybe Linda Pastan’s sectioning of poems helps create a larger picture into which these poems about birds and flowers fit that works for me. The blurb indicates that her work has been compared to Emily Dickinson, so I was more aware of that as I read; one of her own poems indicates the connection, so I guess I just accepted it was true. She has short lines for the most part, but the im...more
Pastan continues to deliver poems of power and grace. I devoured her book and will return to it. Some of my favorites include:
Bread
Noel
Tannenbaum
Insomnia
Counting Backwards
Q and A
Ash
Silence
Anniversary
Flight
Three Perfect Days
In the Har-Poen Tea Garden
Early
Traveling Light
Of the five sections in the book, I most enjoyed the third and fifth ones.
Bread
Noel
Tannenbaum
Insomnia
Counting Backwards
Q and A
Ash
Silence
Anniversary
Flight
Three Perfect Days
In the Har-Poen Tea Garden
Early
Traveling Light
Of the five sections in the book, I most enjoyed the third and fifth ones.
Linda Pastan is one of my favorite poets. The depth of her poems often turns on some witty self-deprecation, which is something that speaks fluently to my own neuroses. This collection of work focuses a lot on her age (nearly 80 at the time of publication), and yet there is a youthful playfulness to many of her poems. Her sardonic take on aging and is both hilarious and heart-breaking, and I found my noting more than a dozen pieces that I'd like to bring to my students!
Linda Pastan is one of my favorite poets. The depth of her poems often turns on some witty self-deprecation, which is something that speaks fluently to my own neuroses. This collection of work focuses a lot on her age (nearly 80 at the time of publication), and yet there is a youthful playfulness to many of her poems. Her sardonic take on aging and is both hilarious and heart-breaking, and I found my noting more than a dozen pieces that I'd like to bring to my students!
Linda Pastan's poems are always like pebbles dropped in clear water. You can see the stone, the ripples it makes, and the consequences that flow from there. Every poem is a perfect fusion of past and present, of what is and what might be.
I was disappointed in the depth of the poems. I like Pastan's work, but these poems seemed weak, underwhelming.
Oh, my. I LOVE Pastan. This is the first book of hers that I've read, and it won't be the last. She has an Oliver-esque simplicity and clarity of image. She also ponders death quite a bit.
Thoughtful, delicate poems about seasons, travel, and aging.
Jun 05, 2013
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