Linda Pastan - Consider The Space Between Stars
Consider the white space between words on a page, not just the margins around them. Or the space between thoughts: instants when the mind is inventing exactly what it thinks and the mouth waits to be filled with language. Consider the space between lovers after a quarrel, the white sheet a cold metaphor between them. Now picture the brief space before death enters, hat in hand: these vanishing years, filled with light.
Another piece by Linda Pastan, this time from 2015’s Insomnia. Pastan’s gift for clarity and conciseness is fully displayed in this poem. The first stanza launches the reader immediately into analysis, with a sibilance that plays so well with the long "a” sounds. These lines could have ended on the simple rhyme, but the speaker drags it longer with the negation to ensure we follow her advice. The space between the words is what gives the words their meaning. Meaning arises only because of the existence of nothingness. In a collection that flirts with the notion of mortality, it’s hard to see the symbolism.
The concept deepens in the second stanza. Our thoughts so often feel rooted in who we are, or the reverse, so pairing them with “invention” provides an uncomfortable reminder that everything about us is the spontaneous creation from nothingness. Our personalities, our very self is the amalgamation of the space between neurons and what happens there. We are invented in that nothingness, and the emptiness of our mouth finds meaning in the words that spill from it.
The image of the lovers lying in bed together but apart expands the scope of this metaphor. A poem that started with these ideas of communication and meaning winds down to a failure in communication. An argument that has led to a space without communication, and in doing so it says so much more. The white sheet brings to mind a ghost, a death of sorts that the speaker herself directly brings to our attention.
The poem closes by transitioning away from the every day and towards the inevitable final space. Death marks the end of this space in the same way that each word marks the end of the gaps between them. It forces us to find meaning, or at the very least fills us with the desire to believe that there is one. Pastan’s death is not some warrior atop a horse but instead is a melancholic figure of resigned formality. He’s a guy with a shitty job that nonetheless must be done. The years blur together in a bright light, and anyone left behind is there trying to make sense of our existence, to give some sort of substance to the space we filled while we were here.
Here’s a bonus Pastan poem for you, titled “Why are your Poems so Dark?”
Isn’t the moon dark too, most of the time? And doesn’t the white page seem unfinished without the dark stain of alphabets? When God demanded light, he didn’t banish darkness. Instead he invented ebony and crows and that small mole on your left cheekbone. Or did you mean to ask “why are you sad so often?” Ask the moon. Ask what it has witnessed.