Linda Goodman is my reading equivalent of “comfort food.” I don’t mean to be disparaging. Far from it. Her prose sparkled the first time I read it, and it still does. An astrologer I know, who’s also a published author, told me that Ms. Goodman has done more to popularize astrology than all the other writers combined. Perhaps that was just a Jovian hyperbole, but her popularity is undeniable.
It’s true that sun sign astrology is less than the tip of the iceberg, but it reaches the masses. It keeps the tradition alive in the consciousness of many. Many who will one day become astrologers or clients of the aforementioned astrologers.
I know some very respectable astrologers who started their journey with Linda Goodman. I didn’t. I started with family story that led me to Cheiro and eventually brought Linda Goodman to me. What kept me walking this path, and still does, are the astrologer-writers whose work is a joy to read.
And there is no finer writer than Ms. Goodman. Her Sun Signs still holds appeal and she still dazzles me with her Love Signs. Even her Relationship Signs, a book about aspects in synastry, is a fun read. She’s fun, yes, but she knows her astrology and she’s a great teacher.
But you know what? She wanted to be remembered as a poet. So keeping that in mind, I want to post a poem of hers. This poem isn’t addressed to any man I ever loved; it speaks to something inside of me. Here is it, from the book Venus Trines at Midnight:
…..to be absolutely honest
as you’ve carefully taught me to be
you’re still a little off center
investigating truth
without consequences
and doing your thing…
playing with platitudes
reading books about Buddha
to learn how to die, before you’ve started to live
straining emotions through a sterile sieve
and scrubbing your squeaky-clean ivory tower
with Brillo pads
each morning
…but you’re improving
Linda Goodman was also my first reading of astrology way back when I was only a client never thinking I would be an astrologer one day.
I was in my late twenties-mid thirties and I was living in Sao Paulo with two of my best friends to this day. Whenever we would go out on a date or find an interesting flirt, we would move heaven and earth to find out what was the guy’s sun sign and rush back home to read all bout his sun sign and flip through the Love Signs book to see if we were compatible.
It still brings fond memories.
Wasn’t she great? I have a poem from her book, Venus Trines at Midnight, hanging on my wall at home. The poem is entitled, “Study your own ephemeris.”
Found it:
“Study Your Own Ephemeris”
Look, just because I’m an astrologer
that doesn’t mean I know everything
(though I thank you for the compliment)
When you wondered why
we wrote all that music together
and fought over every single note
I told you that your progressed Mars
was opposing my natal Mercury
When you asked me what made it rain
at exactly the moment you first kissed me
standing on that village street
I told you the Moon was in a water sign
trining both our Suns
Then you wanted to know
why we saw a rainbow through the snow
one morning in the cemetery
so I explained that Neptune was in Scorpio
sextile Jupiter in Pisces
Last night you had a new question
“What’s going to happen between us?”
Well, I’ll tell you this much
Very soon now
Pluto will conjunct your Venus
I’ve know it since the beginning
Study your Ephemeris, darling
– Linda Goodman
I too was such a big fan of her poems. 🙂
Her books were a big influence in my teenage/young adulthood and I used to have both her Love Poems and Venus Trines at Midnight books – I don’t know where they went ?. . .
Here is another one of her poems I just found on line –
Moon in Libra
When I think of you
I don’t need the crutch of cigarettes or coffee
to face the morning
When I remember you
I scold the dogs more gently if they climb upon my bed
against the rules
Because of you
I buy a bunch of violets every Tuesday
when they’re in season
and bring them home, and keep them till they wither
for no particular reason
except that once I saw them sleeping
near a bristlecone pine in Cripple Creek, Colorado
Since knowing you
I haven’t felt it necessary
to win each game of chess I play
I notice lonely people more
on holidays-like Christmas
place fewer ornaments upon the tree
I like things naked
even me
I’m more compassionate and patient with fools who bore me
even with the ones who ignore me
I take long walks
and yesterday I bought some colored chalks
to try to make a picture of a child
Yet, I can’t find any mention of this magic
in the songs of Solomon
the sonnets of Shakespeare
Montaigne’s essays
or Walter Benton’s poems
They wrote of friends
or lovers
who come together now and then
We haven’t said hello since August
or was it June?
that rainy evening-
or was it late afternoon?
We cannot call this love
How could it be
when we’ve never touched each other
and perhaps we never will
when we have only come as close
as resting elbows on a sill
and looking through the windows of an empty house
listening to the droning buzz of bees
kissing tangled clouds of baby’s breath
and blue forget-me-nots
growing near a broken picket fence
as children do, in enchanted gardens
they half believe are haunted
Nor can we call this friendship
Friends share tragedies and joy by telephone or letter
Our last communication was a postcard in July
Why, one of us could even die
without the other knowing
in time to send some flowers to the church
or light a candle at a distance
It’s like you told me once
if we never saw each other again
it wouldn’t make any difference
you didn’t say it wouldn’t matter
you said it wouldn’t make any difference
and did you know I understood the nuance?
It was so long ago
but, did you know?
– Linda Goodman
I had forgotten all about those poems, I used to have some real favourites among them.
Thanks for triggering the memories Neeti 🙂
I’m a sucker for poetry. Thanks for sharing this one. I love this part, she quotes it in Love Signs:
It’s like you told me once
if we never saw each other again
it wouldn’t make any difference
you didn’t say it wouldn’t matter
you said it wouldn’t make any difference
and did you know I understood the nuance?
It was so long ago
but, did you know?
You are so right – I found Linda Goodman in my late twenties. Before that I wasn’t that interested in Astrology. I read the Pisces description and I was shocked to find out how true it was for myself. She is truly amazing – she gets into the shoes of the sun sign and explains how the people born in this sign look at the world and why they act like that. And she is not judgemental – very positive and accepting of everybody with a very nice light sense of humor. Truly there was time in my life when I was able to read only her books because all the other books would make me cry for one or another reason.
Funny, the other day I read a little bit of the Sun Signs again and even posted some descriptions for Virgo and Pisces. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?
But, of course, nothing is merely a coincidence in this life. It was from her also that I learnt about the Karmic Astrology
Have you read “Gooberz”? It was closest to her heart.
Amazing, isn’t it? How writers truly are immortal.
No, I could not find it. It is not translated in Bulgarian and Amazon does not ship to Bulgaria this particular book. I wanted to read it very much but maybe it was not the right time, yet. Linda says that “the teacher comes when the student is ready” (of course this is an old eastern saying) and that’s why people find and read the right books when they are reafy for them.
I guess that you are bewildered by the fact that I use the present tense but this is more of a peculiarity of the Bulgarian grammar in comparison to the English one. In Bulgarian when we speak about somebody and the qualities he/she posses we don’t change the tense to past after the person dies. I know how it is in English and I thought that maybe I should correct my comment but it didn’t feel right that way to me. 🙂
“Jovian hyperbole”? Bah. It’s true, and any astrologer out there who manages to occasionally make a buck at it owes her a debt of gratitude, “silly Sun Sign stuff” or not.
[…] stare in the distance remembering your student days and a poem by Linda Goodman. The medical student looks confused. “Google it!”, you say, whilst lamenting the lack of proper […]
there’s one which goes…Love you of course I love you that is why I must leave before you know how much…anybody has the lines
Found it online:
“I must go now…
don’t hold me with your eyes
and reach your heart across the room
or my own will brake Love you? Of course I love you
That’s why I have to go…
Before you know how much.”
—Venus Trims at Midnight • Linda Goodman
Linda Goodman has always been an icon of immense spiritual magnitude…the depth of which we’re yet to fathom in certain writings of hers…she’s fantastic…has always been my idol