Linda Pastan: When will I be most myself?

This month's model poem for our prompt is Linda Pastan's "Something About the Trees." It's a pantoum and I know from doing Poets Online for ten years that form of any kind scares off poets and limits submissions. (From an editing point of view, limiting submissions has its advantages!)

There is a lot more about the pantoum form on my previous post, but we are going to suggest that your submission be a pantoum, but only require a few rules of the form. You'll see that some poems are often described as "imperfect pantoums" and I can live with that.

Pastan's poem talks about her parents and her childhood belief that her father would "always be the surgeon" and that her mother would remain "the perfect surgeon's wife." She had frozen them in time at a place where they seemed just right. She thought that "they both would live forever."

She recalls that her father told her that:

There is an age when you are most yourself.
He was just past fifty then,

Is the father recalling an earlier time? Pastan recalls them at age 30 being perfect. Would they agree with their daughter?

Because the poem is a pantoum, she needs some strong lines that will repeat and possibly carry changed meanings. Two of those are "I used to think" and "I thought they both would live forever."

Pantoums are sometimes described as musical because of the refrains. I think that they also have a circling, lullaby feel because of the interlocking lines.

I had some trouble with the line, "Was it something about the trees that make him speak?" I imagine the poem's setting as winter. The trees are bare. Her father is 50 - hardly old enough to suggest death, but perhaps old enough to be past autumn and into the early part of the winter of life. Is that why the trees made him speak?

She asks, "When will I be most myself?" and that is the line our prompt focuses on. Write a poem that addresses the age in which you, or the voice of your poem, were, or will be, most yourself. Not an easy question.

As far as the form, you certainly could try a pantoum, but otherwise follow these 3 imperfect rules:

1. You must use quatrains (4 line stanzas)
2. The first 4 lines must reappear in exactly the same format in some subsequent stanzas at least once more, and
3. the poem's first line must also be its last.
   

If you decide to try a true pantoum, take a look at this How-To page - you might find it easier to number your lines, for example.

Our prompts almost always give a print version of the poem, but for this month I really would suggest listening to Pastan read the poem. I think the musicality is much clearer.

There are actually 3 (not 2) poems on the video clip. I recommend that you watch all three. First is the funny "Notes from the Delivery Room," followed by "A Short History of Judaic Thought in the 20th Century" and then the pantoum "Something About the Trees."

To see the poem in print, try this site.

Pantoums

The pantoum is a verse form which is often considered to be "musical." Other forms with refrains, like the triolet, villanelle and paradelles, use refrain and repetition in similar ways.

The pantoum originated in France, but is based on the Malayan pantun form. Pantoums became popular in Europe and moved to North America in the nineteenth and more so in the twentieth century.

In France, the tradition is often credited to the work of Ernest Fouinet, Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire who made the form fashionable. For more on the history and examples, check my source, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.

The Malay pantun uses metonymy and follows the same rhyme and line patterns as are used in the pantoum. Traditionally, in a pantun the first two lines of each quatrain present an image or an allusion, and the second two lines of each quatrain convey the theme and meaning.

Let us focus on the pantoum. Unfortunately, explaining this type of form often sounds like a riddle. That's why Billy Collins was able to parody it so easily in his invented paradelle form.

A pantoum is composed of a series of quatrains (4 line stanzas). The second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues and there can be any number of stanzas.

The final stanza usually offers a variation. It may contain the first and third lines of the first stanza as its second and fourth lines. Often, the final stanza's fourth line is the poem's first, and the third line of the poem may or may not appear as the second line of the final stanza.

One desired effect in the pantoum is to have the meaning of lines shift when they are repeated. The idea of words remaining the same and meaning changing is basic to poetry in general. This can be accomplished by punctuation, punning, or by placing the words in a new context.

Another way to look at "the rules"

• Use 4-line stanzas (as many as needed - usually an odd number).
• Line lengths can vary.
• Pantoums say everything twice.
• The rhyme scheme is abab in each quatrain - lines rhyme alternately.
• The final line of the pantoum must be the same as its first line.
  

I'm sure some formalists would have more to say (or correct me), but that's the basics.

It is always helpful to look at examples:

1. "Pantoum of the Great Depression" by Donald Justice
2. “Stillbirth” by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
3. “Baby’s Pantoum” by Anne Waldman
4. "Parent's Pantoum" by Carolyn Kizer (includes audio)
5. “Bareback Pantoum” by Cecilia Woloch
6. "Harmonie du soir" by Charles Baudelaire (imperfect pantoum, in French and in English translations)

and, to emphasize that musical quality, how about "I Am Going to Like It Here" by Oscar Hammerstein - another imperfect pantoum, which is a song from the musical Flower Drum Song.