May Sarton

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May Sarton
May Sarton.jpg
Born Eleanore Marie Sarton
(1912-05-03)May 3, 1912
Wondelgem, Belgium
Died July 16, 1995(1995-07-16) (aged 83)
York, Maine
Resting place Nelson, New Hampshire
Occupation Novelist, poet, memoirist
Nationality Belgian, American
Genres Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children's literature
Partner(s) Judy Matlack

May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995), an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.

Contents

Biography [edit]

Sarton was born in Wondelgem, Belgium (today a part of the city of Ghent). Her parents were science historian George Sarton and his wife, the English artist Mabel Eleanor Elwes. When German troops invaded Belgium after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, her family fled to Ipswich, England where Sarton's maternal grandmother lived. One year later, they moved to Boston, Massachusetts. She went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating from Cambridge High and Latin School in 1929. She started theatre lessons in her late teens, but continued writing poetry, eventually publishing her first collection in 1937 entitled Encounter in April.[1]

In 1945 she met her partner for the next thirteen years, Judy Matlack, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They separated in 1956, when Sarton's father died and Sarton moved to Nelson, New Hampshire. Honey in the Hive (1988) is about their relationship.[2] In her memoir At Seventy, she reflected on Judy's importance in her life and how her Unitarian Universalist upbringing shaped her.[3]

Sarton later moved to York, Maine. In 1990, she suffered a stroke, severely reducing her ability to concentrate and write. After several months, she was able to dictate her final journals, which celebrated the joys of her life.[4] She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995, and is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.[5]

Works and themes [edit]

Despite the quality of some of her many novels and poems, May Sarton's best and most enduring work probably lies in her journals and memoirs, particularly Plant Dreaming Deep (about her early years at Nelson, ca. 1958-68), Journal of a Solitude (1972-1973, often considered her best), The House by the Sea (1974-1976), Recovering (1978-1979) and At Seventy (1982-1983). In these fragile, rambling and honest accounts of her solitary life, she deals with such issues as ageing, isolation, solitude, friendship, love and relationships, lesbianism, self-doubt, success and failure, envy, gratitude for life's simple pleasures, love of nature (particularly of flowers), spirituality and, importantly, the constant struggles of a creative life. Sarton's later journals are not of the same quality, as she endeavoured to keep writing through ill health and often with the help of a tape recorder.

Although many of her earlier works, such as Encounter in April, contain vivid erotic female imagery, May Sarton often emphasized in her journals that she didn't see herself as a "lesbian" writer, instead wanting to touch on what is universally human about love in all its manifestations. When publishing her novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing in 1965, she feared that writing openly about lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the previously established value of her work. "The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing," she wrote in Journal of a Solitude, "to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality ..." [6] After the book's release, many of Sarton's works began to be studied in university level Women's Studies classes, being embraced by feminists and lesbians alike.[1]

Margot Peters' controversial biography (1998) revealed May Sarton as a complex human being who often struggled in her interpersonal relationships.

Bibliography [edit]

Poetry books [edit]

  • Encounter in April (1937)
  • Inner Landscape (1939)
  • The Lion and the Rose (1948)
  • The Land of Silence (1953)
  • In Time Like Air (1958)
  • Cloud, Stone, Sun, Vine (1961)
  • A Private Mythology (1966)
  • As Does New Hampshire (1967)
  • A Grain of Mustard Seed (1971)
  • A Durable Fire (1972)
  • Collected Poems, 1930-1973 (1974)
  • Selected Poems of May Sarton (edited by Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes) (1978)
  • Halfway to Silence (1980)
  • Letters from Maine (1984)
  • Collected Poems, 1930-1993 (1993)
  • Coming Into Eighty (1994) Winner of the Levinson Prize
  • From May Sarton's Well: Writings of May Sarton (edited by Edith Royce Schade) (1999)

Nonfiction [edit]

  • I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959)
  • Plant Dreaming Deep (1968)
  • Journal of a Solitude (1973)
  • A World of Light (1976)
  • The House by the Sea (1977)
  • Recovering: A Journal (1980)
  • Writings on Writing (1980)
  • May Sarton: A Self-Portrait (1982)
  • At Seventy: A Journal (1984)
  • After the Stroke (1988)
  • Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993)
  • At Eighty-Two (1996)

Novels [edit]

  • The Single Hound (1938)
  • The Bridge of Years (1946)
  • The Return of Corporal Greene (1946)
  • Shadow of a Man (1950)
  • A Shower of Summer Days (1952)
  • Faithful are the Wounds (1955)
  • The Birth of a Grandfather (1957)
  • The Fur Person (1957)
  • The Small Room (1961)
  • Joanna and Ulysses (1963)
  • Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965)
  • Miss Pickthorn and Mr. Hare (1966)
  • The Poet and the Donkey (1969)
  • Kinds of Love (1970)
  • As We Are Now (1973)
  • Crucial Conversations (1975)
  • A Reckoning (1978)
  • Anger (1982)
  • The Magnificent Spinster (1985)
  • The Education of Harriet Hatfield (1989)

Children's books [edit]

  • Punch's Secret (1974)
  • A Walk Through the Woods (1976)

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b May Sarton: A Poet. Harvard Square Library.
  2. ^ Pobo, Kenneth (2002). "Sarton, May". Chicago. Chicago: glbtq, Inc. Retrieved 2007-08-29. 
  3. ^ "May Sarton". Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. 
  4. ^ May Sarton: A Poet's Life. University of Pennsylvania.
  5. ^ "May Sarton". Poets.org. Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 2009-05-10. 
  6. ^ Journal of a Solitude, 1973, pp. 90-91.

External links [edit]