Baseball By Linda Pastan Summary

Life is a journey. It has its ups and downs, but anyone can survive the challenges if he or she just believes. Many people can relate to life, but some people do not see it as Linda Pastan does as she shows it through her poems “Marks” and Baseball.” These poems were written in two totally different time periods of her life. Pastan portrays the use of extended metaphors in each poem, which creates a sense of………. Linda Pastan was a great poet while also a wife and mother. Pastan started sending her work to The New Yorker at age twelve (Potvin par. 6). Later, she went to college and got married. Pastan stated in an interview that she stopped writing for about ten years, because she could not be the perfect wife and mother that she was expected to be and also commit herself to her poetry (Brown, 3). She considers herself “a product of the ‘50s – what I called the perfectly polished floor syndrome. I had to have a homemade desert on the table for my husband every night” (Brown 3). Such experiences reflected her poetry, significantly. Pastan uses many poetic devices, such as metaphors. Two of her poems, “Marks” and “Baseball” are similar in comparing two distinct things to life, but in different ways. “Marks” is a poem consisting of a

In an interview on “The PBS Newshour” with Jeffrey Brown, Pastan stated, “I think I 've always been interested in the dangers that are under the surface, but seems like simple, ordinary domestic life. It may seem like smooth surfaces, but there are tensions and dangers right underneath, and those are what I 'm trying to get at” (Brown 2). “Marks” reveals the same attitude that Pastan has towards domesticity. The title of the poem “Marks” plays a significant role in the meaning of the poem. This title is meant to be the marks that Pastan receives when her family members grade her based on her role of a mother and