Insomnia

August 1, 2015

In her 14th collection (after Traveling Light), Ruth Lily Poetry Prize winner Pastan, presents eloquent yet easily understood poems about aging, art, love, nature, and writing. Pastan's voice is sure, her language succinct and often beautiful. Here's how the poet describes something as ordinary as a steadfast leaf at the change of seasons: "a yellow leaf refusing to fall,// deserter from the great autumn/ army." There's a philosophical bend to many poems. In "Fireflies," for instance, she compares the insects' staccato lights to "flashes of insight/ that flare// for a moment/ then flicker out." But what makes this book especially powerful is Pastan's revealing a new vulnerability about the end of life, a view chiseled by illness and closeness to what lies on the other side. In one poem, the poet even speaks directly to death: "Pierce/ my heart// with the sharp ring/ of the doorbell:/ throw pebbles// at my window...// No more of these/ odd hints: a feather/ of blood here,// a shadow, the size/ of a thumbprint,/ on an X-ray there." In addition, in several excellent ars poetica pieces, Pastan examines her life's work, comparing the craft of poetry to farming, describing it as "coaxing each nebulous seed// to grow. Year after year// of drought or rainstorm." VERDICT Not a dark book, but one rich with supple humor and affirmation, this is an essential purchase by one the most accomplished poets writing today. [See Prepub Alert, 6/14/15.]--Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015
Pastan (Traveling Light, 2012) has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award. Insomnia, her fourteenth collection, is not only about lying awake unable to sleep; it also concerns wakefulness and being awake and sensitized to transience. The sleeplessness of the title is answered by the book's final poem, Musings Before Sleep. In this collection, sleep is also death, but Pastan does not rage against the dying of the light. Her tone is even, and despite occasional moments of asperity, the poems are in the middle voice, uncovering and expressing a variety of feelings between resignation and acceptance. Pastan has honed her craft. In Elizabethan we find this marvelous couplet, even the crown of the sun / must go down every night. Among many ekphrastic poems, the best evoke the arts of Japanwoodblock prints, gardens, haiku, sushi. Pastan is allusive, unafraid to refer to canonical poems, as when she reverses Keats's famous injunction: Perhaps beauty / is the mother of death. Insomnia is a fine collection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)