A New Poet by Linda Pastan
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
A New Poet
Linda PastanFinding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don’t seeits name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the wayits leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilledred wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day – the odor of truth
and of lying.And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if onlyin your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.
—
This is from Carnival Evening by Linda Pastan, published by W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.