Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan (1932-2023) was born in the Bronx, New York to a Jewish family. She was raised in Armonk, in Westchester Country. Pastan’s father, an immigrant from Europe, was a surgeon. Her mother was a homemaker who occasionally worked at Pastan’s father’s medical practice. Pastan graduated from Radcliffe College, earned a master’s degree in library science from Simmons University in Boston, then received an MA in English and American literature from Brandeis University in 1958. During her senior year at Radcliffe, Pastan won a collegiate poetry prize sponsored by Mademoiselle magazine. Sylvia Plath placed second in the contest. 

Driving West

Though the landscape subtly changes,

the mountains are marching in place.

The grasses take on the fading

yellows of the sun,

and cows with their sumptuous eyes

litter the fields as if they had grown there.

We have driven for hours

through bluing shadows,

as if the continent itself leaned west

and we had no choice but to follow the old ruts—

the wagons and horses, the iron snort

of a locomotive. We are the pioneers

of our own histories, drawn

to the horizon as if it waited just for us

the way the young are drawn

to the future, the old to the past.

— Linda Pastan