Linda Pastan
Linda Pastan (1932-present) is an American Jewish poet raised in New York City. She has lived most of her life in Potomac, Maryland and was the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991-1995. Educated at Radcliffe College, Pastan has written 15 books of poetry, often involving themes of motherhood, family life, the female experience, aging, loss and fear of loss, and death. Source
Why Are Your Poems so Dark?
Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?
And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished
without the dark stain
of alphabets?
When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.
Instead he invented
ebony and crows
and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.
Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"
Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.
Published:
2003
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Ars Poetica
Literary Devices:
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.
Couplets
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit
Rhetorical Question
a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered