Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Linda Pastan's poem "Autumn" explores the delicate balance between the beauty of seasonal change and the inevitable associations with loss and mortality. Through a simple yet profound reflection on the arrival of autumn, Pastan captures the tension between the desire to celebrate the season's colors and the underlying awareness of life's transience. The poem is a meditation on how we perceive the world around us, particularly in the context of aging and the passage of time.

The poem opens with the speaker expressing a wish: "I want to mention / summer ending / without meaning the death / of somebody loved / or even the death / of the trees." This desire reveals the speaker's awareness that the transition from summer to autumn is often laden with connotations of decline and loss. The speaker wants to acknowledge the end of summer without invoking the heavier associations of death that typically accompany the fall season. This wish reflects a yearning to focus on the present moment and the beauty it holds, rather than being overshadowed by thoughts of mortality.

The poem then shifts to a scene in a market, where the speaker overhears a mother pointing out the pumpkins to her child: "Look at the pumpkins, / it's finally autumn!" The child's reaction is simple and unburdened: "And the child didn't think / of the death of her mother / which is due before her own / but tasted the sound / of the words on her clumsy tongue: / pumpkin; autumn." Here, the innocence of the child contrasts with the speaker's more complex understanding of time and mortality. The child engages with the season through the sensory experience of language, savoring the words "pumpkin" and "autumn" without the weight of existential concerns. This moment highlights the difference between a child's perception of the world—focused on immediate experiences—and the adult's awareness of the inevitable passage of time.

In the following lines, the speaker urges a shift in perspective: "Let the eye enlarge / with all it beholds." This line suggests a call to embrace a broader, more expansive way of seeing, one that can hold both the beauty of the present and the knowledge of life's impermanence without diminishing either. The speaker expresses a desire to "celebrate / color," to focus on the vibrant, living aspects of autumn rather than its associations with decline.

The poem concludes with a vivid image: "how one red leaf / flickers like a match / held to a dry branch, / and the whole world goes up / in orange and gold." This metaphor captures the sudden, breathtaking beauty of autumn as it transforms the landscape with fiery colors. The comparison of the leaf to a match suggests both the intensity and the fleeting nature of this beauty—how quickly it can ignite and just as quickly fade away. The image of the "whole world" being engulfed in "orange and gold" speaks to the overwhelming power of this seasonal change, where the landscape is briefly but brilliantly transformed.

In "Autumn," Linda Pastan invites readers to appreciate the beauty of the season without being overshadowed by the inevitable thoughts of mortality that often accompany it. The poem acknowledges the presence of these thoughts but encourages a focus on the richness of the moment, the colors, and the experiences that make life vibrant and meaningful. Through her careful attention to language and imagery, Pastan captures the essence of autumn as a time of both beauty and reflection, urging us to see the world with an enlarged perspective that embraces both life and its impermanence.

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