Erin+Tapp+-+Linda+Pastan


 * "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.

When I was looking for a poem to blog about, my mom happened to come into my room just as I found this one. She read it over my shoulder, and we both almost burst into tears. This poem explores the hardships and strong emotions that come from a daughter leaving to go out into the real world. Because I am leaving for college this fall, this poem hit both me and my mom especially hard. Pastan’s description of the emotions that come with growing up and leaving the “nest” are so real that it almost knocks the wind out of you. The poem is told from the point of view of a parent, watching their child mature and grow up. The line “I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up, while you grew smaller, more breakable with distance,” represents how parents still feel the need to protect and shelter their children as they grow up, even though the reality is that they can’t hold on forever. As much as parents don't want to accept that they must let their offspring become independent, this poem acknowledges that it is something that will happen and can't be avoided. Pastan uses a parent training their child to ride a bike as a metaphor for a parent raising their child. Throughout the poem, she describes the process of a child learning to ride a bike and compares it to a parent helping and watching a child move through different phases of life. Just like learning how to ride a bike, as children begin to develop and learn to walk, their parents may be “loping along beside”, but ultimately, the child will learn to “wobble away.” As a child begins to grow, the more they become independent and no longer need their parents to teach them everything, which parents struggle with. She says “ I kept waiting for the thud of your crash,” which shows how parents almost go into a sense of denial as their children grow up and are able to do things on their own. Pastan’s tone is one of sadness and loss, which she conveys to the reader in the last line while she watches her daughter’s “hair flapping behind [her] like a handkerchief waving goodbye.” Pastan also uses many action verbs such as “loping, wobbled, pulled, sprinted, pumping, screaming, waving” that give the poem a very real and dynamic feeling. This also contributes to the concreteness of the piece that makes the poem easier to relate to and understand. Pastan gets right to the root of a parent’s rawest emotions as they watch their kids grow, become independent, and ultimately leave them.

Here is a video of the poem being read:

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 * "Vertical" **

Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal the verticality of trees which we notice in December as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms yearning upwards. And since we will be horizontal ourselves for so long, let us now honor the gods of the vertical: stalks of wheat which to the ant must seem as high as these trees do to us, silos and telephone poles, stalagmites and skyscrapers. but most of all these winter oaks, these soft-fleshed poplars, this birch whose bark is like roughened skin against which I lean my chilled head, not ready to lie down.

I found this poem by Linda Pastan to be inspiring and beautiful. With the opening line, “perhaps the purpose of the leaves is to conceal the verticality of the trees,” she speaks in admiration of the strong, thick trunk that supports the tree that has been revealed by the loss of its leaves. Pastan admires and is inspired by the trees' hidden strength and “verticality.” She too desires to live upright, and show the beauty and strength that lies beneath her outward experience. The tree perhaps serves as a metaphor for the author herself; the trunk symbolic of her inner character and strength that is only revealed once she allows herself to no longer hold onto her "leaves," such as her insecurities and outward struggles. In the same way that the trees have a "yearning upwardness," she too seems to be searching for some sort of redemption. Towards the end of the poem, her description of the trees becomes one of almost reverence, and her personification the “soft-fleshed poplars… whose roughened skin against which [she] lean[s her] chilled head,” shows how she is dependent on the trees as a source of strength and support. She regards these trees as if they were a best friend or spouse. She uses imagery of both the natural and man made world to describe other "vertical" objects whose strength and uprightness encourages her. She admires the strength of the “stalks of wheat, trees, telephone poles, stalagmites, and skyscrapers,” and she is calling people to draw strength from outside of themselves. This juxtaposition of the natural and man made world perhaps indicates that inspiration and strength can come from anywhere, even somewhere one would have least expected. Pastan is also calling her readers to not give in to laziness or just go through the motions of life. She points out that after we die, or “because we will be horizontal for so long,” we have limited time to truly live. The structure of the poem, such as the short stanzas and free verse make it feel as if it is a pure flow of emotion, simply words spoken from the heart. The poem is a beautiful flow of honesty as well as a reminder to all to make the most of life.

Here's an image that reminded me of the poem:


 * "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. In Linda Pastan’s poem, “A New Poet”, she elevates discovering a new poet to an almost a sacred experience of beauty in the natural world. In the first and second stanzas, she uses a wildflower as a metaphor for a new poet, describing them both as something beautiful and rare to stumble upon. In the following lines, she describes how getting people to appreciate an unknown poet is as hard as convincing them of the discovery of a new species of a flower. Both the wildflower and the poet, because they have never been discovered, are different than what people are familiar with, and therefore people are often frightened to accept them. When she says “you don’t see its name in the flower books, nobody you tell believes in its odd color,” she uses the wildflower as a symbol for the new poet. The wildflower is symbolic of the unpublished poet; because people don’t know their content or name, they tend to pass them off as insignificant. Pastan is arguing however, that like the unnamed wildflowers, unpublished poets are some of the most unique because their words aren’t cliché or just like those of the published poets. After her description of people’s reactions to a newly discovered wildflower, she talks about the essence of an unknown poet that makes them different and captivating. When she says that the page on which a new poet writes “smells of spilled red wine and the mustiness of the sea on a foggy day - the odor of truth and of lying,” she describes what is unique about this newly found poet. This description could perhaps be symbolic of the poet’s struggle. The red wine might be symbolic of blood that represents the hard life of an unknown poet, and the sea on a foggy day is perhaps symbolic of the poet’s uncertainty of their future, or of their influence by the natural world. In the last two stanzas, she connects herself and other artists to the newly discovered poet. She seems to be speaking from personal experience, both being discovered as a poet and finding other poets. In the final stanza, she speaks almost reverently of the poet’s words, describing it as an art, and connecting the poet’s struggle to be recognized to the struggle that all types of unknown artists face. Both the wildflower and the poet face similar battles of survival that when they are discovered, make them rare and something to admire.

here is a video of the poem being read: []


 * "Vermilion" **

Pierre Bonnard would enter the museum with a tube of paint in his pocket and a sable brush. Then violating the sanctity of one of his own frame she'd add a stroke of vermili onto the skin of a flower. Just so I stopped you at the door this morning and licking my index finger, removed an invisible crumb from your vermilion mouth. As if at the ritual moment of departure I had to show you still belonged to me. As if revision were the purest form of love.

In this poem, Pastan compares her relationship with her husband to that of a famous artist with his work. I had never heard of the artist she describes, Pierre Bonnard, but I researched him and learned that he was a French artist who was known for his use of bright, thick colors. He was also known for using his wife as the subject of many of his pieces. In this poem, Pastan compares herself to Bonnard. She says in the first few lines that Bonnard would “violate the sanctity of one of his own frames [and] he’d add a stroke of vermilion.” Vermilion is a natural pigment that is a red, orange color. In the second half of the poem, Pastan describes a “ritual moment” when she wipes a crumb from her husband’s vermillion colored lips. She is comparing the way that she takes care of and tries to perfect her husband to the way that Bonnard would perfect his wife in a painting. She also relates herself to the artist when she “licks her index finger” before touching her husbands lips, in the same way that an artist would wet his brush before dipping it in the paint. She links the similarities of the two relationships to the title, Vermilion, which as a type of paint, represents both the artist and Pastan’s want to reform their life’s joys: his being his art and hers being her husband. I found it interesting that Bonnard often painted his wife, and I thought that perhaps Pastan intentionally chose to use him in this poem for that very reason—to show that both Bonnard and she are connected by their want to have an active role in their spouses lives. In the last lines, she says that she “had to show that [he] still belonged to her,” which implies that maybe their relationship is not as simple as an artist painting an image; rather, she wishes she could have as much control over her husband as an artist does over his work.

Here is a painting by Bonnard of his wife Marthe: