Why Are Your Poems So Dark?, by Linda Pastan

Resource for Grades 7-12

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?, by Linda Pastan

Media Type:
Video

Running Time: 0m 45s
Size: 2.1 KB


Source: Poetry Everywhere

This media asset comes from Poetry Everywhere filmed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

Resource Produced by:

WGBH Educational Foundation

Collection Developed by:

WGBH Educational Foundation

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This video segment from Poetry Everywhere features Bronx born poet Linda Pastan reading her poem "Why Are Your Poems So Dark?" at the Dodge Poetry Festival. Linda Pastan’s poems use very simple language and plain statements to describe everyday situations—visiting a museum, taking care of children, listening to a message on an answering machine. But she ends up uncovering the dark worries and threats that hide just below that quiet surface of daily life.

For a biography of the poet Linda Pastan please visit the Poetry Foundation Web site.

open Background Essay

“I think I've always been interested in the dangers that are under the surface [of what] seems like simple, ordinary domestic life,” says Pastan. “It may seem like smooth surfaces, but there are tensions and dangers right underneath, and those are what I'm trying to get at.”

In this poem, the poet responds to someone’s question, or complaint, about the dark side she describes in her poetry. It seems most likely that the question “Why are your poems so dark?” is a complaint, since some people see poetry as something that should be beautiful, about nature, or love, and that if poetry does describe everyday life, it should not make that life seem slightly sinister.

Pastan’s response moves from big to small, from universal to particular, from poetic image to everyday sight. The moon, she points out, is also dark at least half the time. The moon is a standard poetic topic, something many poets have written about and that everyone on Earth can see. She goes on to find beauty in other dark items: writing, a familiar mole.

We all have some darkness in our skies, our lives, and our selves, says Pastan, because we can’t avoid some darkness. There are two reasons for this: first, it is a part of nature (“When God demanded light/he didn’t banish darkness”); second, it is part of human nature (“Ask the moon./Ask what it has witnessed.”). Ignoring the darkness in everyday life keeps it hidden under the surface—Pastan exposes it and acknowledges the power of darkness to balance light.

Read a biography of the poet Linda Pastan at the Poetry Foundation Web site.


open Discussion Questions

  • Why do you think Pastan wrote this poet in unrhymed couplets? What affect does this have on the way you read the poem?
  • The poet uses another person’s question as a way to organize the poem and provide a series of answers. How would you define the difference between darkness and sadness?
  • Why do you think Pastan says God did not banish darkness, although God demanded light? What does she think about the balance between dark and light or good and evil?
  • What does the idea of darkness and light mean to you?

open Transcript

For a transcript of this poem, please visit the Poetry Foundation Web site.


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