[Linda Pastan's The five stages of grief: Poems] bears resemblance to her previous works in its quality of imagery and consistency of tone. The imagery seems always familiar yet exactly correct, like an old myth restored in new words. These new words, the images and statements, then weave themselves into a voice that speaks, rails, sings of life, of its disappointments, inevitabilities, and possibilities. But this voice has the consistent tonal qualities a child remembers as being behind the stories heard read through the winter of sleepless nights. This consistency of tone unifies the whole volume as clearly as do the physical divisions, the five stages one goes through before the acceptance of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Even more important than the overall structure of the work is the fine structure of each poem. The poems are delicately crafted, like small carvings amazingly designed yet simple and totally precise in every detail. The content of the poems reflects intelligence, vitality, and a mind of forgiveness.