Linda+Pastan-Haas

Folk Tale

All knobs and knuckles, hammer knees and elbows 1 they were a multitude of two, man and woman dwelling as one tight flesh. In hallways, on stairs vaguely lit by twilight, in their own meager bed they would collide. . . veer off. . . 5 collide, like aging children aiming those bumper cars, madly in Kansas Coney Islands. Blue sparks jumped on their ceiling, lit her stockings strangling his faucet, his fist plumbing her shoulder's depth for blood. Until, as it is told, 10 they brought the cow into the house, straight from the barn, oppressed for years with milk. They tied it, lowing, to the icebox, pastured it on rubber plants and dusty philodendrons. They brought the horse in next, leaving the plow 15 like an abandoned aircraft, nose down in rusting fields of corn. The pig, the donkey, the rooster with its crowd of hens, they even brought a neighbor's child complete with spelling words and scales that wandered up and down the untuned 20 piano searching for roost as the chickens searched and the cow, nuzzling the humming frigidaire as if it were a calf.

So they survived with all that cuckoo's brood, hearing the horse stamp through the floorboards, the donkey chew the welcome mat, and all night long through tumbling barricades of sleep the yeasty rise and fall of breath. By blue television light they milked and gathered, boiled the placid eggs that turned up everywhere, laughed with the child, fed the pig, and glimpsed each other's rounded limbs reflected for a moment in the copper washtub or around the feathers of a settling hen. And winter passed; and spring; and summer, The child left first, all braided, for the school bus. The cow died of old griefs. The horse dreaming of harness, the pig of swill, the donkey of what magnitude of straw, broke out one night and emptied the ark. Man and woman leaning on brooms stood at the kitchen door and waved, saw through a blaze of autumn the cock's comb like one last, bright leaf flutter and disappear. Then jostling a bit, for ceremony's sake, they turned and lost themselves in so much space.

The poem “Folk Tale” is a complicated one by Linda Pastan. Dealing with all different types of imagery it is hard to find a deeper meaning to the poem. I chose this poem because I thought it was very interesting and has a hidden meaning to it. The first sentence of the poem “All knobs, and knuckles, hammer knees and elbows…dwelling as one tight flesh”, is discussing the makings of a human body, and the how a couple come together to form one whole person. The next sentence “In hallways, on stairs veering lit by twilight, in their own meager bed…madly in Kansas Coney Islands”, discusses the intimate interactions between couples. The break in the sentence with the ellipses causes the reader to stop and slow down when saying, “veer off” to make those words more powerful and important. This sentence also has references to children and uses the imagery of bumper cars to show the importance of children in the poem. In the next sentence, “Blue sparks jumped on their ceiling, lit her stockings…depth for blood”, uses imagery of pipes and plumbing to show the deep connection the couple has with one another. The next sentence, “Until, as it is told, they brought the cow…for years with milk”, is explaining how the couple is trying to bring in more bodies and people into their house to parent, like they would a baby. The next sentence ties into the previous one discussing how they helped the cow to grow, as they would with a baby. The significance of the next sentence is hard for me to understand. I am unsure on how to interpret it. The closing sentence of this poem is seven lines, the longest sentence in the poem. It is listing off the more animals that come into the house, and the noise and commotion that come with it. It is discussing how each animal is searching for something, like how children are searching for meaning in their lives from their parents and others. This poem overall has a sad tone to it. It is a folk tale about parenting and helping children grow up. It leaves me with a sort of puzzled feeling.

Here is an image of a plow like the one mentioned in line 15

[|Horse Plow]

[|American Gothic]

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?

Isn't the moon dark too, 1 most of the time?

And doesn't the white page seem unfinished

without the dark stain 5 of alphabets?

When God demanded light, he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented ebony and crows 10

and that small mole on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask "Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon. 15 Ask what it has witnessed.

Linda Pastan’s poem “Why Are Your Poems so Dark?” is short and easy to understand. It is one of my favorite poems by her that I have read thus far because of how straightforward it is. The poem is separated into eight stanzas, containing two lines each. The first line of the poem, “Isn’t the moon dark too,” starts off the poem by asking a question. The way the line the is written makes the readers put more stress on the last word “too” which makes it sound like your posing a question. The second line of the stanza “most of the time?” is almost considered a separate question from the first line. It has an unsure tone to it that makes you wonder if what is being said is actually true. The next stanza “And doesn’t the white page seem unfinished” poses another question before the whole sentence is finished. The stanza is showing how white/ light in the world always seems wrong unless there is a hint of darkness to it. The next stanza,” without the dark stain of alphabets”, shows the darkness that is supposed to be on the image of the white sheet of paper. The next stanza, “When God demanded light, he didn’t banish darkness”; uses religion to the importance of some darkness in the world. The following stanza, “Instead he invented ebony and crows”, explains how God dealt with having darkness in the world, and how he presented it. The sixth stanza uses imagery of a dark mole on “ your cheekbone” which shows that no matter who you are darkness is someone present in your life, which is a theme of the poem. The seventh stanza “Or did you mean to ask why are you sad so often”, poses another question to the reader that makes it feel like the poem is really a conversation between the poet and the reader themselves. The last stanza of the poem uses an image of the moon to enforce the idea that darkness is ever present in everyone’s lives. This poem is written in a way that it really is an answer to the title of the poem “Why are Your Poems so Dark?”

Here is a link to a video of Linda Pastan reading this poem [|Reading of the Poem]

Death's Blue-Eyed Girl

When did the garden with its banked flowers 1 start to smell like a funeral chapel, and the mild breeze passing our foreheads to feel like the back of a nurse's hand testing for fever? We used to be 5 immortal in our ignorance, sending our kites up for the lightning, swimming in unknown waters at night and naked. Death was a kind of safety net to catch us if we fell too far. Remember Elaine 10 standing in April, a child on one hip for ballast, her head distracted with poems? The magician waved and bowed, showed us his empty sleeves and she was gone.

Linda Pastan’s “Death’s Blue-Eyed Girl” addresses the presence of death in our lives. It consists of fourteen lines split into two stanzas. The overall themes of the poem are loss, death and transition. The message of the poem is for everyone to think about their final mortality and their death. She use’s metaphors, and images to show the personification of death in the poem to help get the message across. The first four lines of the poem asks deep questions about death; “When did the garden with its banked flowers start to smell like a funeral chapel, and the mild breeze passing our foreheads to feel like the back of a nurse’s hand testing for fever?”. The images used in lines 1-5, help to pose one of the major questions addressed in the poem, when does death actually start to appear in our lives? These lines directly feed in into the next question in which one must ask when does death move from being innocent in a child’s eye to an adults full understanding of death. Lines 5-8, “We…naked”, talk about the innocence acts of being a child and how death is a far off idea that does not apply. The next line “Death was a kind of safety net to catch us if we fell too far”, transitions into an adult understanding of death in which our actions can have consequences that could end fatally. The image of Elaine brought into the poem in line 10, is used to show how quickly life can end. She is first shown as an alive and living person, but then the poem ends with how fast and sudden her death is. In line 13, the image of the magician is a personification of death, and how it takes peoples lives so quickly, and spontaneously. The poem overall has a very grim tone and feeling, but it is supposed to force the reader to think about how quick life is and not to take it for granted.

[|blue eyes]

An Early After Life

Why don’t we say goodbye right now 1 in the fallacy of perfect health before whatever is going to happen happens. We could perfect our parting, like those characters in //One the Beach 5// who said farewell in the shadow of the bomb as we sat watching, young and holding hands at the movies. We could use the loving words we otherwise might not have time to say. 10 We could hold each other for hours in a quintessential dress rehearsal.

Then we could just continue For however many years were left. The ragged things that are coming next- 15 arteries closing like rivers silting over, or rampant cells stampeding us to the exit- would be like postscrips to our lives and wouldn’t matter. And we would bask in an early afterlife of ordinary days, 20 impervious to the inclement weather already in our long-range forecast. Nothing could touch us. We’d never have to say goodbye again.

Linda Pastan’s poem “An Early After Life” is a free verse poem that addresses the idea of the opposition between life and the afterlife. It is twenty-four lines and is split into two stanza’s. The form of the poem matches the division addressed in the poem between life and afterlife, in which the first stanza discusses life, and the second stanza discusses the afterlife. The major message of this poem is to always expect death so you should cherish every moment you have like it is your last, like your last “goodbye”. The first stanza of the poem discusses life if you were to say goodbye and to actually enjoy life like it was your last day alive. It uses the repeated phrase “we could” to describe all the different things that could be accomplished if you expected death to come, and you were given extra time to live. The first line of the poem “Why don’t we say goodbye right now in the fallacy of perfect health before whatever is going to happen happens”, is saying that we all are going to die and that no one is actually healthy because we all have the same fate, so why not accept that and enjoy life. The first stanza explains a good life before the after life comes. The second stanza discusses the afterlife. The first line, 13-19, describes dying. The images of the “arteries closing” show how death occurs and how we all reach our ultimate fate. The second stanza discusses how accepting death early in life is better because then you can never be disappointed in life. The last lines of the second stanza talk about how accepting death will lead to a better life because it will be like an “early afterlife”. Death will never be a surprise if we all accept that it will happen, we can enjoy our lives after accepting it. The tone of this poem is really gloomy but it gives the reader something to think about when approaching the idea of the death.

Here is a link to Michelanelo's Last Judgement painting. It depicts life and the after life. [|last judgement]