{"id":2233,"date":"2012-07-26T23:15:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T03:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=2233"},"modified":"2017-05-02T12:10:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T16:10:25","slug":"linda-pastan-q-and-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/26\/linda-pastan-q-and-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda Pastan, “Q and A”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Linda
\nphoto: Margaretta K. Mitchell<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

I thought I couldn’t be surprised:
\n“Do you write on a computer?” someone
\nasks, and “Who are your favorite poets?”
\nand “How much do you revise?”<\/p>\n

But when the very young woman
\nin the fourth row lifted her head
\nand without irony inquired:
\n“Did you write<\/p>\n

your Emily Dickinson poem
\nbecause you like her work,
\nor did you know her personally?”
\nI entered another territory.<\/p>\n

“Do I really look that old?”
\nI wanted to reply, or “Don’t
\nthey teach you anything?”
\nor “What did you just say?”<\/p>\n

The laughter that engulfed
\nthe room was partly nervous,
\npartly simple hilarity.
\nI won’t forget<\/p>\n

that little school, tucked
\nin a lovely pocket of the South,
\nor that girl whose face
\nwas slowly reddening.<\/p>\n

Surprise, like love, can catch
\nour better selves unawares.
\n“I’ve visited her house,” I said.
\n“I may have met her in my dreams.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Traveling Light<\/i><\/a> is the thirteenth collection of Linda Pastan’s poems. “Ash<\/a>” appeared in The Atlantic<\/i>, while “The Burglary<\/a>” was published in The New Yorker<\/i>. The New Republic<\/i> published “Years After the Garden<\/a>,” and The Paris Review<\/i> published “Eve on Her Deathbed<\/a>.” Nimrod<\/i> published “Counting Backwards<\/a>,” but it’s available online through the Poetry Foundation’s website, which also hosts “On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial<\/a>” (first published in Prairie Schooner<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Plus, you can hear Pastan read “Acorns<\/a>” at Slate<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

photo: Margaretta K. Mitchell I thought I couldn’t be surprised: “Do you write on a computer?” someone asks, and “Who are your favorite poets?” and “How much do you revise?” But when the very young woman in the fourth row lifted her head and without irony inquired: “Did you write your Emily Dickinson poem because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[403,402],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2233"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4238,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions\/4238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}