The Last Uncle: Poems

by Linda Pastan

Overview

"Autumnal and subdued...movingly chronicles loss, fear, the passing of time."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

In The Last Uncle, Linda Pastan writes, "If death is everywhere we look, / at least let's marry it to beauty." The poems in this new collection deal with loss and the difficult transition between generations, but they are also about love and landscape and the many pleasures of the imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393325300
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/17/2003
Pages:	88
Sales rank:	1,088,625
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

1.
	"Women on the Shore"	3
	Practicing	4
	Muse	5
	Tears	6
	A Glass of Cold Water	7
	To a Poet, Recently Silent	8
	Austerity	9
	The Invalid	10
	Death of a Potter	11
	The Answering Machine	12
	Grace	13
	The Dangerous Month of March	14
	The Cossacks	15
2.
	Memory's Guest	19
	Family History	20
	Frances and Mary Allen, Sewing Group, ca. 1900	21
	The Lost Kingdom	22
	March 5	23
	Reading the Obituary Page	24
	Potsy	25
	Bess	26
	Armonk	27
	Another Autumn	28
	The Last Uncle	29
3.
	Penultimate Things	33
	Weather	34
	Husbandry	35
	Late Love Songs	36
	The Vanity of Names	38
	To Penelope	39
	43rd Anniversary	40
	White Lies	41
	Round the Mulberry Bush	42
4.
	The Crossing	49
	Near the Sacrificial Site	50
	We Get What We Wish For at Our Peril	51
	Ghiaccio	52
	Fibula	53
	Wherever We Travel	54
	Gone Missing	55
	graffiti, route 22	56
	Crows	57
	Travelogue	58
	The Islands	59
	Effets de Neige: Impressionists in Winter	60
	After a Long Absence, I Return to a Site of Former Happiness	61
5.
	The Butterfly Tree	65
	The Death of the Bee	66
	Threshold	67
	Fame	68
	Oak Leaves	69
	Poison Ivy	70
	In the Garden	71
	The Months	72

Editorial Reviews

Pastan's unfailing mastery of her medium holds the darkness firmly in check.

New York Times Book Review

Maryland's former poet laureate plays to her strengths in this restrained and sensitive 11th collection. Readers have long loved Pastan (Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998) for her quiet lyrics of suburban domestic life, of marital love and motherhood, and of grief. Many new poems concentrate on the last of these subjects, linking her own aging body, and the loss of older relatives, to what she sees in gardens and trees, in European travels, in American Jewish history or in visual art. Medical and familial experience common to older Americans drives several bittersweet poems. In one, "the ophthalmologist told me gravely/ that I didn't produce enough tears"; in another, "I look at my aging/ children. Ask me, I want/ to tell them. Ask me now." Seasonal motifs and family members together control almost the whole volume, from "Another Autumn" ("Was love enough, even then?") to the 12 12-line poems called "The Months," with which the volume concludes. While Pastan's domestic lyric still lacks the intellectual heft of seemingly similar work (by, say, Louise Glick), this work remains deeply felt and will certainly please her existing broad audience. Whether in short lines or long, outdoors or indoors, she seeks a fluent, accessible lyric seriousness, finding in seasonal and domestic properties ("daffodils," "doctors," "the door knocker," "the deer") signs of mortality, gratitude and wonder. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"The pills I take to postpone death/ are killing me," writes Pastan in her new collection of poems, her 11th in about 35 years. Here she deals with loss, with death and other passings, and with the often curious journey through the stages of aging. However, in these careful, insightful considerations of time and its occasional rough edges, the poet finds much to celebrate: the hard-won beauty of her son's piano playing; the "love and/ disobedience" of her dog, who is given to sit regardless of the command; a tree surrounded by "a dozen monarchs/ and swallowtails as if they were/ its second crop of blossoms." These are the things to remember, to praise: a branch outside the window, soon to be kindling; an old car going to rust; "the 8th dog of my life;/ the 10th scribbled book./ And love turning its back on endings/ one more time." Pastan has done a good job of turning our attention to what really matters. "If death is everywhere we look,/ at least let's marry it to beauty." Pastan's poems are always worth our attention. Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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