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    A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World"
    A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World"
    A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World"
    Ebook32 pages22 minutes

    A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535825269
    A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World"

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      A Study Guide for Linda Pastan's "I Am Learning to Abandon the World" - Gale

      12

      I Am Learning to Abandon the World

      Linda Pastan

      1981

      Introduction

      Linda Pastan's I Am Learning to Abandon the World is a poem about the slow and inevitable approach of death as the narrator's years advance. For Pastan, the act of writing is her means of bearing up under an unavoidable fate; it is writing that gives meaning to her life. In an interview with Lisa Granik in Truthtellers of the Times: Interviews with Contemporary Women Poets, Pastan characterizes her identity as a writer and the function of writing in her life: There is great joy in being a writer. The discoveries you make about the world and about yourself give the greatest pleasure. The real pain is when I can't write. I Am Learning to Abandon the World expresses how Pastan uses poetry as a defense against death, or at least the effect of approaching death, in a necessarily losing battle.

      I Am Learning to Abandon the World was first published in Poetry magazine in September 1981; the next year, it was included in Pastan's anthology PM/AM: New and Selected Poems. The poem uses Pastan's main themes of nature and death. It is also firmly anchored within her secular identity. The domesticity of her poems is at war with her feminist leanings.

      Although Pastan has not received any major poetry awards, she is one of the most prominent living American poets, the kind of writer who is always seriously considered for the post of poet laureate of the United States, a post she has already held in her home state of Maryland.

      Author Biography

      Pastan was born on May 27, 1932, in the Bronx, New York, to Jacob and Bess Olenik. Her parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Like many children of immigrants, they took advantage of new educational

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