You tell me to live each dayas if it were my last. This is in the kitchenwhere before coffee I complainof the day ahead—that obstacle raceof minutes and hours,grocery stores and doctors.But why the last? I ask. Why notlive each day as if it were the first—all raw astonishment, Eve rubbingher eyes awake that first morning,the sun coming uplike an ingénue in the East?You grind the coffeewith the small roar of a mindtrying to clear itself. I setthe table, glance out the windowwhere dew has baptized everyliving surface.
Imaginary Conversation
Linda Pastan
Feature Date
- August 22, 2024
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“Imaginary Conversation” from ALMOST AN ELEGY: by Linda Pastan.
Published by W.W. Norton on October 4, 2022.
Copyright © 2024 by Linda Pastan.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Linda Pastan (1932–2023) was the author of fifteen volumes of poems. A two-time National Book Award finalist and former poet laureate of Maryland, her many honors include the Maurice English Award and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems have been translated into eight languages.
"This luminous volume shows a master craftsperson reveling and reflecting on the world’s beauties and pains, finding deep meaning at every turn."
—Publishers Weekly
"Restless and serene, spirited and subdued.… [Linda Pastan’s] poems look at the drama and depth of ordinary life."
—Paris Review
"Deceptively simple, casually precise, stylishly candid?these are the earmarks of a Pastan poem."
—Washington Post
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