It’s hard to believe that October 2026 marks 20 years since I was able to do a small, flash interview with one of my favorite poets, Linda Pastan.
Linda passed away in January 2023 at the age of 90. Her death was covered extensively online, including an obituary in The New York Times. If you’re new to her work, I’d recommend starting with Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems, 1968-1998.
Her 15th and last collection, Almost An Elegy, was released in 2022.
Pastan, who I had communicated with on prior occasions via email, politely noted before the interview that her answers would be short, “just like my poems.”
Here’s the 2006 interview:
Montgomery Maxton: The Washington Post says your new collection Queen of a Rainy Country is by “one of the real treasures in poetry of our time”. Why do you think so many have taken a liking to your work?
Linda Pastan: I hope you’re right, but that’s one question I don’t know how to answer.
Montgomery Maxton: Do you have a place in the world that you go to for relaxation, celebration, grounding?
Linda Pastan: Home.
Montgomery Maxton: I think the cover of your new collection is the most beautiful cover of all your books. What was your first impression of the cover and do you think an attractive cover is important, regardless of the age old saying?
Linda Pastan: Norton is wonderful about letting me select my own cover art and then giving it to a creative cover designer to work with. Since poets gets little in the way of fame or fortune, we only have the book to hold in our hands. So how it looks, as an object, is very important, at least to me.
Montgomery Maxton: Do you have a favorite novel?
Linda Pastan: Pride and Prejudice (and the contemporary take on it in my daughter Rachel Pastan’s novel This Side of Married).
Montgomery Maxton: Who are some poets that make up your library of favorites?
Linda Pastan: I don’t think we have enough space for me to list them all. A few contemporary poets I love, who are no longer with us, are: Yehuda Amichai, James Wright, Stanley Kunitz, Donald Justice, Roland Flint.
Linda Pasta in 2014. Photograph by Carina Romano.
