Linda+Pastan

===Linda Pastan was born in Bronx, New York on May 27, 1932. Although she was born in New York, she spent most of her life living in Potomac, Maryland. During her senior year of college, Linda won the Mademoiselle poetry prize. After graduating college, Linda decided to put her poetry on pause to focus on her family. After getting her family started, her husband encouraged to start her poetry back up. Entering the 1970's, Linda started her poetry back up and focused her poetry around marriage, parenting, and grief. Linda Pastan has won several awards for her poems and novels she has written.===

=**To A Daughter Leaving Home**=

When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away on two round wheels, my own mouth rounding in surprise when you pulled ahead down the curved path of the park, I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up, while you grew smaller, more breakable with distance, pumping, pumping for your life, screaming with laughter, the hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye. —Linda Pastan

In this poem by Linda Pastan, it represents a daughter leaving home. The diction the poet used throughout this poem allows for you to interpret a deeper meaning of what the poet is truly trying to get at. It starts off by the speaker describing a mother taking her child to a park perhaps and teaching her how to ride a bike. How quickly the little girl learns how to ride the bike is how quickly a daughter grows up and right before you know it, she’s gone. The speaker says that the little girl wobbled away. When someone is wobbling whether it’s on a bike or walking, it means they have no control. The speaker may feel like as the little girl is wobbling on her bike, she might not have control of her life when she leaves home. The speaker also says that they were surprised as they watched the little girl go around a curved path in the park. This can symbolize that when she leaves home, it’ll be easy for her to take risks as it was easy for her to take a big step like that being she was a beginner with riding a bike. This can either bring worry or happiness to the mother depending on if the risks taken are good or bad. In the poem it also says that the parents waited for a “thud or a crash”. The thud or the crash that the parent was expecting for their child to come across while riding a bike can be a thud or a crash that the parent fears will happen when the daughter leaves home. This can be frightening to a parent because when their daughter leaves and if something bad happens to her while she is away, they will not always be there physically to help. The last thing the poet says is “the hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye”. This ties the whole mood of the poem together showing that the parent is really emotional and sad that their child is leaving home.

=**Marks**=

My husband gives me an A for last night's supper, an incomplete for my ironing, a B plus in bed. My son says I am average, an average mother, but if I put my mind to it I could improve. My daughter believes in Pass/Fail and tells me I pass. Wait 'til they learn I'm dropping out.

—Linda Pastan

In this poem by Linda Pastan, the whole poem is based around metaphors. The wife/mom in this poem is being judged on how she does things around the house. How her husband and how her kids are grading her on how she does around the house is equivalent to a how a teacher would grade a student’s work in a classroom. In a typical household, you would have the parent’s grading their kids on how they do things around the house but in this scenario, it’s everyone else grading the mom/wife. The speaker says “my husband gives me an A for last night’s supper, incomplete for ironing”. This means that the wife did an outstanding job when it came to dinner but when it came to the category of ironing, the wife failed. The mother proceeds to say that the son says she is an average mother and that she can use some improving. Being average in school means that you are good at the work you do but you can always strive to do better. Basically the son is saying that his mom is a good mom but she could be better and that he is not really satisfied with the way his mother is now. The daughter believes in you either passing or failing and she tells the mom that she passed. Although this may be a good critique, it doesn’t compare to all of the other grades she has gotten from her son and her husband. At the end of the poem, the mother/wife says, “Wait ‘til they learn I’m dropping out”. The things that have been said to her can be very discouraging and hurtful words to her more than they think they are. By her saying she is dropping out it could mean she’s possibly leaving the family, killing herself, or it could simply mean she is finally going to stand up for herself and put an end to this grading system.

=**A New Poet**=

Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods. You don't see its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes in its odd color or the way its leaves grow in splayed rows down the whole length of the page. In fact the very page smells of spilled red wine and the mustiness of the sea on a foggy day - the odor of truth and of lying. And the words are so familiar, so strangely new, words you almost wrote yourself, if only in your dreams there had been a pencil or a pen or even a paintbrush, if only there had been a flower. -- Linda Pastan

In this poem by Linda Pastan, she is talking about discovering new poets. In the beginning of the poem, we see that Linda Pastan used a simile in lines 1 and 2 when she said, “Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower”. What she means by this is that it is not an easy task. Finding a new flower is rare as it is for finding new poets. For a person to become a poet and to write good poems, they have to have a special creativity and mind because not all people can write poems. The speaker then says how when explaining and describing this new wildflower to others, they do not believe them. They cannot believe that by the way it looks on the outside it should be worthy and special enough to become its own flower. This is another way of how when new poets are established, most people would not believe that by how someone looks on the outside, they have such creativity on the inside to create beautiful pieces of artwork through words. In lines 11 and 12, the speaker says,”…on a foggy day- the odor of truth and of lying”. This part of the poem had now steered away from using the wildflower as a metaphor and moved more to speaking about a poet itself. When poets write, they usually write about experiences in their life that they deal with either on a regular or in their past life. The speaker also talks about how the words are so familiar to them indicating that poets often have the same thoughts, it is just all about who gets first to writing it down on paper to express their true feelings and thoughts. Most imagining and thoughts for poems comes through dreams and that is why the speaker said, “if only in your dreams there had been a pencil or pen, or even a paintbrush”.

=**Emily Dickinson**=

We think of hidden in a white dress among the folded linens and sachets of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight sending jellies and notes with no address to all the wondering Amherst neighbors. Eccentric as New England weather the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle, blew two half imagined lovers off. Yet legend won't explain the sheer sanity of vision, the serious mischief of language, the economy of pain. --- Linda Pastan

In this poem, Linda Pastan is writing about Emily Dickinson herself and about her character. Throughout this poem, the speaker describes Emily Dickinson as secretive and mysterious by using words like hidden and out of sight. It shows that she was not the type of woman to have everything out for people to view or was not the type to have people fully involved in her life. She rarely ever left her house because then that would require her to be involved with people interaction which she was not a big fan of. She stayed in her house but she would mail poetry, sometimes sending them with “jellies”, which could possibly mean with cakes, cookies, or cupcakes. Also when she sent this mail out, she did not include her address on her mail which allowed for her to make sure people would not show up at her house, nor would they mail anything back to her. The speaker in the poem says that her mind blew two half imagined lovers off her mind. Emily Dickinson herself loved two men who soon left her because they were married to two other woman and they just so happened to be having an affair with Emily Dickinson. She had thoughts of becoming a bride to either of these men and that is why she wore the white dress because she soon hoped that one day, she would be wearing one when becoming a bride. In lines 6 and 7, the speaker says, “Eccentric as New England weather, the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle…” which indicates that Emily Dickinson was sometimes unpredictable. She could be nice and more caring or she could be the woman where she was rude and more uptight. Although by Linda Pastan writing this poem about Emily Dickinson, she would never understand why Emily Dickinson was the way she was and why she did the things she did.