{"id":93220,"date":"2016-01-06T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93220"},"modified":"2016-01-06T14:38:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T19:38:00","slug":"the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Carina Romano<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s a popular story about Linda Pastan: <\/em>she won her first poetry prize as a senior at Radcliffe in the fifties, and the runner-up was one Sylvia Plath. It was an auspicious start for Pastan, even if she had never heard of Plath at the time<\/a>. She\u2019s gone on to publish fourteen books, amassing a host of accolades along the way. Her latest collection, <\/em>Insomnia<\/a>, appeared last fall. Her poems have appeared in <\/em>The Paris Review since 1987; the most recent, \u201cThe Collected Poems,\u201d was in the\u00a0Fall 2015 issue<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no self-pity,\u201d May Sarton wrote of Pastan\u2019s <\/em>Five Stages of Grief: \u201cshe has reached down to a deeper layer and is letting the darkness in. These poems are full of foreboding and acceptance, a wry unsentimental acceptance of hard truth.\u201d The same could be said of <\/em>Insomnia, in which Pastan, who is eighty-three now, reckons with old age in lines that are variously restless and serene, spirited and subdued. \u201cWhy are these old, gnarled trees so beautiful,\u201d she writes, \u201cwhile I am merely old and gnarled?\u201d In these poems, the bucolic and the morbid are never far apart. In \u201cRoot Ball,\u201d she likens an asteroid that lands in her garden to \u201ca giant brain, ripped from its skull.\u201d <\/em>I spoke to Pastan, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, about sleep, dreams, and manure.<\/em><\/p>\n

Did a lot of the poems in this collection emerge from sleeplessness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do suffer from insomnia myself, and on more than one occasion, while I\u2019m lying in the dark, the solution to a problem I\u2019ve been struggling with in a poem actually, and magically, comes to me. But more usually I try to put myself to sleep by thinking about the plot of a book I\u2019m reading or a movie I just saw. Many people my age seem to have trouble sleeping, and I suppose it may be because that long and final sleep is just ahead, and even if we don\u2019t acknowledge it, we want to be awake and aware as long as possible. I was warned early not to give a book a title that would make it easy for a reviewer to slam you. Such as, If you have insomnia, try reading this book and it will put you right to sleep. And it has occurred to me that one or more people might buy the book thinking it will help them with their own sleep problems. But more seriously, I chose Insomnia<\/em> as my title because the word conjures for me a struggle with consciousness itself as well as a struggle with the looming dark, just outside the window.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How much did you think about the structure of the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, putting together a new book is a lot like putting together a new poem. In fact I think the book itself becomes a kind of poem in its own right, with its own structure, flow, and integrity. And although I usually hide my title poem somewhere deep within each book\u2019s pages, this time it felt right to start with \u201cInsomnia: 3 A.M.\u201d I am often drawn to the circular, both in individual poems and in this case in a book itself. \u201cMusings Before Sleep\u201d seemed the proper ending partly because it closed the circle and partly because it implies that despite insomnia, sleep is sometimes on its way.<\/p>\n

You open \u201cThe Poets\u201d with the line \u201cThey are farmers, really.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was partly tongue in cheek, partly serious. For me, there are two distinct phases in the writing of a poem\u2014first the inspiration phase, when language and metaphor come mysteriously into my head, then the planting, sowing, farming phase, otherwise known as revision. The first is a kind of gift, as in \u201cgifted\u201d\u2014it can\u2019t be taught. The second is a matter of learning and practicing one\u2019s craft. But it\u2019s also true that I couldn\u2019t resist having poems planted in manure-filled rows and having poets eyeing each other over bushel baskets in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

The last two lines of my poem \u201cVermilion\u201d are \u201cAs if revision were \/ the purest form of love.\u201d And I believe that for a poet it is. Many of my poems go through at least a hundred revisions\u2014I can spend a whole morning putting in a comma and then taking it out and putting it back in. And I think that perhaps I am at my happiest sitting at my desk polishing a poem, trying to make every word the perfect word.<\/p>\n

You have a poem in the new collection called \u201cRemembering Stafford on His Centennial.\u201d Could you talk a little about William Stafford and what his work meant to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Often when I sit at my desk unable to write, \u201cblocked\u201d as they put it, I open a Stafford book and start to read. He makes it sound so easy, almost conversational, that I find I have to answer him, and so I start to write. My first four or five lines may have a Stafford ring to them, but then my own voice kicks in and I am on my way. I loved and admired William Stafford both as a man and as a poet. I hate to use adjectives like wise<\/em> or humble<\/em> but they seem to fit him as comfortably, as unpretentiously, as an old sweater.<\/p>\n

When I wrote the line \u201cHow complicated such simplicities are,\u201d I was referring both to his character and to his work. I had in mind, for instance, his famous poem \u201cTraveling Through the Dark.\u201d In the third stanza of that poem, there is a small hesitation\u2014\u201cmy only swerving\u201d\u2014before he pushes the dead deer and its unborn fawn into the river, thus preventing further accidents. In that simple pause lie all the unstated complexities such a decision must entail.<\/p>\n

\"pastaninsomnia\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Your poems look at the drama and depth of ordinary life without lapsing into sentimentality\u2014and in poems like \u201cAfter a Long Absence, I Return to a Site of Former Happiness\u201d or \u201cAnd Evening,\u201d you look at death without flinching.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am indeed interested, you might say obsessed, not with ordinary life per se <\/em>but with the dangers lurking just beneath its seemingly placid surface, one of those dangers being loss itself. Death, of course, is the ultimate danger, the ultimate loss, and as I move closer to it, I write about it more frequently and perhaps more feelingly. Though I recently came upon some poems I wrote when I was twelve, and they, too, are about death.<\/p>\n

Over the course of your career, you\u2019ve written relatively short poems. Have you had any interest in writing longer work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I read novels compulsively and would love to write them. But my impulse is always to condense, and the few times I\u2019ve tried writing prose, or even narrative poetry, I keep chipping away at the words until I may end up with no more than a haiku. Has the quality of my poems been consistent over the years? That\u2019s for my readers to say. Has my voice changed? The question of voice is a tricky one. Writers talk about looking for their voice or about finding their voice, and it\u2019s hard to define exactly what they mean. But I do know that the poems in my first book, A Perfect Circle of Sun<\/em>, are in some ways of a piece, in tonality at least, with the poems in my new book, Insomnia<\/em>. Whatever voice<\/em> is, I seem to have found mine early. Not that that\u2019s necessarily a good thing\u2014change is good, too. Yeats\u2019s early poems, for instance, are very different from his mature work, which is deeper and stranger. On the other hand, could Keats\u2019s voice have been any better if he had lived a longer life? I do know that my subject matter has changed\u2014no more delivery rooms for me, no more children leaving home\u2014even my grandchildren are grown by now. But I think my poems have been consistent over the years in terms of their interest in metaphor, in the changing of the seasons, in Eden, in the dangers lurking beneath the surfaces of everyday life, in Death just waiting. And their ambition has always been to be both accessible on the surface and complex, even mysterious, underneath.<\/p>\n

Marina Tsvetaeva said there are poets with history and poets without history. You were writing when you were young, but you were first\u00a0published when you were in your thirties. <\/strong><\/p>\n

As an only child with only books for company, I started reading and writing poetry early\u2014at eleven or twelve.\u00a0I wrote the poem for the back of my high school graduation program. I scribbled poems in notebooks and on scraps of paper.\u00a0But it never occurred to me that real people could become poets. I married young and gave up poetry almost completely\u2014one or two poems a year\u2014until my husband told me he was tired of hearing what a good poet I might have been if I hadn\u2019t married him. I had just given birth to our third child, but we managed to set up a schedule, complete with babysitters, that would allow me to devote every morning to writing. I was thirty-two. The poems I wrote before that time were fairly traditional\u2014strict rhyme and meter, a few of them even picture postcard pretty.\u00a0But when I allowed myself to become seriously engaged by language, actually sitting down to write every day, I think that my essential voice came very quickly.<\/p>\n

Alex Dueben has written for\u00a0<\/em>The Rumpus, the\u00a0Poetry Foundation,\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Daily Beast, and elsewhere. His interview with William Gibson was included in\u00a0<\/em>Conversations with William Gibson<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a popular story about Linda Pastan: she won her first poetry prize as a senior at Radcliffe in the fifties, and the runner-up was one Sylvia Plath. It was an auspicious start for Pastan, even if she had never heard of Plath at the time. She\u2019s gone on to publish fourteen books, amassing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[8769,2186,10672,14021,1132,19207,9331,7221,165,2047,2704,12214],"class_list":["post-93220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-aging","tag-death","tag-dying","tag-insomnia","tag-interviews","tag-issue-214","tag-linda-pastan","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-sylvia-plath","tag-william-stafford"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLinda Pastan Talks About Her New Collection, \u201cInsomnia\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The poet, now eighty-three, discusses her style and the way her voice has evolved over the years.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan by Alex Dueben\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 6, 2016 \u2013 There\u2019s a popular story about Linda Pastan: she won her first poetry prize as a senior at Radcliffe in the fifties, and the runner-up was one Sylvia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-06T19:38:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"648\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"372\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Alex Dueben\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Alex Dueben\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Alex Dueben\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/905637dcd06974d2de0ca3542de5c4f4\"},\"headline\":\"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-06T19:38:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\"},\"wordCount\":1645,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"aging\",\"death\",\"dying\",\"insomnia\",\"interviews\",\"issue 214\",\"Linda Pastan\",\"poems\",\"poetry\",\"poets\",\"sylvia plath\",\"william stafford\"],\"articleSection\":[\"At Work\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\",\"name\":\"Linda Pastan Talks About Her New Collection, \u201cInsomnia\u201d\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-06T19:38:00+00:00\",\"description\":\"The poet, now eighty-three, discusses her style and the way her voice has evolved over the years.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/905637dcd06974d2de0ca3542de5c4f4\",\"name\":\"Alex Dueben\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d609cb553d5b17e1aa5efbe7875889d197c91f66b270526f6158c666d8c72b5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d609cb553d5b17e1aa5efbe7875889d197c91f66b270526f6158c666d8c72b5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Alex Dueben\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/adueben\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Linda Pastan Talks About Her New Collection, \u201cInsomnia\u201d","description":"The poet, now eighty-three, discusses her style and the way her voice has evolved over the years.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan by Alex Dueben","og_description":"January 6, 2016 \u2013 There\u2019s a popular story about Linda Pastan: she won her first poetry prize as a senior at Radcliffe in the fifties, and the runner-up was one Sylvia","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-01-06T19:38:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":648,"height":372,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Alex Dueben","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Alex Dueben","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/"},"author":{"name":"Alex Dueben","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/905637dcd06974d2de0ca3542de5c4f4"},"headline":"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan","datePublished":"2016-01-06T19:38:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/"},"wordCount":1645,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg","keywords":["aging","death","dying","insomnia","interviews","issue 214","Linda Pastan","poems","poetry","poets","sylvia plath","william stafford"],"articleSection":["At Work"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/","name":"Linda Pastan Talks About Her New Collection, \u201cInsomnia\u201d","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg","datePublished":"2016-01-06T19:38:00+00:00","description":"The poet, now eighty-three, discusses her style and the way her voice has evolved over the years.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/linda-pastan-photo-by-carina-romano.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/06\/the-looming-dark-an-interview-with-linda-pastan\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/905637dcd06974d2de0ca3542de5c4f4","name":"Alex Dueben","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d609cb553d5b17e1aa5efbe7875889d197c91f66b270526f6158c666d8c72b5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d609cb553d5b17e1aa5efbe7875889d197c91f66b270526f6158c666d8c72b5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Alex Dueben"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/adueben\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93220"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93229,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93220\/revisions\/93229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}