Category: Vocal Music / Art Song
Instrumentation: voice, piano
Duration: 8 minutes
Text / Source: Poems by Linda Pastan
Publisher: North Star Music, LLC

Songs:
Self Portrait at 44
Marks
Caroline

Three Poems by Linda Pastan is a set of three art songs for voice and piano, setting poems by former Maryland State Poet Laureate Linda Pastan. The cycle includes Self Portrait at 44, Marks, and Caroline, each offering a distinct emotional and dramatic perspective on maturity, dignity, mortality, and self-understanding.

The songs vary in difficulty and character, moving from reflective middle-age acceptance to sharply humorous resistance and finally to an elegiac meditation on death. Baxter’s settings combine lyrical vocal writing, tonal grounding, and contemporary harmonic color with a strong sensitivity to Pastan’s direct, resonant poetic language.

Three Poems by Linda Pastan is well suited for vocal recitals, contemporary American art song programs, and concerts centered on women poets, aging, identity, humor, and loss. The songs may be performed as a complete set or individually, with Marks specifically intended for female voice.