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 Glück), 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.)
