Bøker av May Sarton

Lucid, ardent, and contemplative, May Sarton is one of America's best-loved writers. This comprehensive collection - the first in twenty years - celebrates six decades of bold imagination and fifteen books of poetry, the creative output of a lifetime. Arranged chronologically, these poems reveal the full breadth of Sarton's creative vision. Themes include the search for an inward order, her passions, the natural world, self-knowledge, and, in her latest poems, the trials of old age. Moving through Sarton's work, we see her at ease in both traditional forms and free verse, finding inspiration in snow over a dark sea, a cat's footfall on the stairs, an unexpected love affair. Here is the creative process itself, its sources, demands, and joys - a handbook of the modern poetic psyche.

Her works ranges from passionately honest diaries like Journal of a Solitude and novels with memorable characters like As We Are Now to superbly crafted lyrical poems and evocative descriptions of nature in poetry and prose.Here for the first time in an anthology of the best of May Sarton's novels, journals, and poetry. The editor, Bradford Dudley Daziel, is chairman of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Westbrook College in Portland, Maine.

May Sarton's love for Juliette Huxley, ignited that first moment she saw her in 1936, transcended sixty years of friendship, passion, rejection, silence, and reconciliation. The letters chart their meeting, May's affair with Juliette's husband Julian (brother of Aldous Huxley) before the war, her intense involvement with Juliette after the war, and the rich, ardent friendship that endured until Juliette's death. While May's intimate relationship with Julian was not a secret, May's more powerful romance with Juliette was. May's fiery passion was a seductive yet sometimes destructive force. Her feelings for and demands on Juliette were often overwhelming to them both. In fact, Juliette refused all contact with May for nearly twenty-five years. Their reconciliation, after Julian's death, wasn't so much a rekindling as it was a testament to the profound affinity between them. Theirs was a relationship rife with complications and misunderstandings but the deep love and compassion they shared for one another prevailed. Included in this book are Sarton's original drafts of an introduction to these letters.

The engrossing drama begun in May Sarton: Selected Letters 1916-1954 culminates in this gathering of 200 quintessential letters, culled from thousands. Copiously annotated, they propel the reader with passionate immediacy through the rich years of this beloved author's maturity and world-wide fame, to her death. "Sarton is one of the great letter writers of our time," Library Journal affirmed of the first volume. And here once again we see her in every aspect: the hard-pressed writer, the tormented lover, at her fiercest and most fond; the friend, confidante and passionate traveler, intensely engaged by public issues, ceaselessly searching for the elusive muse which made poetry and the creative transformation of life possible. In addition to longtime friends and intimates familiar from Volume One-Louise Bogan, Eva Le Gallienne, Bill Brown, Muriel Rukeyser and the Huxleys-the more than 150 recipients in this volume include Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bowen, Carolyn Heilbrun and Doris Grumbach, Madeleine L'Engle, Pat Carroll, and Marianne Moore."No topic escapes her," Susan Kenney wrote of the first volume, and in the breadth and amplitude of these vibrant missives to friends and strangers, poets and scientists, actors and scholars, teachers and editors from every corner of the States and throughout Europe, the reader will partake of her joys, and learn well her griefs; it is no coincidence she always capitalized Hell. Particularly rich are her letters to members of the religious community who were drawn to the spiritual center in her work; her magnificent letters of condolence; her fiery replies to critics; her trenchant, generous responses to the many young writers who touched her; and her life-enhancing responses to hordes of admirers. Here, too, we are privy to several intense love relationships, and live beside her through the landmark publications of Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing and her revolutionary Journal of a Solitude. We accompany her as she writes the celebrated lyric poems which, with missionary fervor, she brought alive in dynamic readings to standing-room-only audiences across America, as long as she could do so. And finally we are witness to the gradual diminishments of age as, with characteristic courage, she charges into her ninth decade, "ardent and alone." Selected Letters 1955-1995 offers new insights and throws fascinating sidelights on Sarton's multi-faceted character, presenting an awesome self-portrait-more revealing than anything yet published-of this truly singular woman who, faithful to her "vision of life"-and like the legendary phoenix which marks her grave -never ceased to be reborn over and over again. As critic William Drake put it, "May Sarton always seems to be speaking to each one of us personally, as if we were a friend." In this richly moving and nourishing collection-the capstone of her literary legacy-this unforgettable woman speaks to each of us, as to each correspondent, once again in her timeless voice."Readers will find this volume a valuable companion to Sarton's other work; reading it put me back in touch with her keen intelligence, her restless but rich spirit, and I enjoyed it tremendously." -Eleanor Dwight, author of Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life "In a century of cruel inhumanity, 'life-enhancing' poet, novelist and journal-keeper May Sarton showed us, most of all, how to be human. . . . That is why we find in her a friend, and will keep rereading these thoughtful letters and her books for clues about the journey ahead." -Father John Dear, author of Living Peace "Those who know her journals will find here a Sarton willing to examine the underside of creativity, a Sarton who refuses to stay stuck in life or work. This book passes on that courage to readers." -Alexandra Johnson, author of Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal "A searingly honest self-portrait of a complex and many-sided woman. . . . What a feast!" -Dr. Claire Douglas, author of Translate This Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan, the Veiled Woman in Jung's Circle

Emotional and forthright, Anna battles against Ned's crippling reserve. In the clash of these two strong personalities, May Sarton explores the different ways that men and women express both anger and love.

Sarton writes perceptively of how age affects her: the way small things take longer and tire more, what it feels like to endure pain and to be afraid. Other days her energy returns, her spirits lift, and projects abound. Readers both new and old will cherish this latest dispatch from her ongoing journey.

This novel, first published in 1946, is one of May Sarton's earliest and, some critics think, one of her best. It takes place during the years between the world wars and explores the life of a Belgian family, the Duchesnes, and their mutual devotion which intensifies under the shadow of impending disaster.Mélanie Duchesne, mother of three, is an active businesswoman, whose courage, energy, and optimism bind the family and its farm together. Paul, her husband, is a philosopher, detached, moody, continually embroiled in the spiritual conflicts of a crumbling Europe.The last years before the second war are tense ones, a time for stock-taking, for a quickening of the pace of life. But it is Mélanie who encourages her family to proceed with their plans, to continue with their way of life. And it is Mélanie who decides their future as the Germans launch their invasion of Belgium.

May Sarton's ninth novel explores a woman's struggle to reconcile the claims of life and art, to transmute passion and pain into poetry. As it opens, Hilary Stevens, a renowned poet in her seventies, is talking with Mar, an intense young man who has sought her out and whose passionate despair reminds her of herself when young. Mar has had an unhappy love affair with a man. Bewildered by both his sexuality and his writing talent, he flings his anguish against Hilary's brusque, sympathetic intelligence.

An extended fable about a Latin mistress, in retirement with her translations of Horace, and a hobo who takes up residence in the henhouse nearby.

Anxiously embarking on her first teaching job, Lucy Winter arrives at a New England women's college and shortly finds herself in the thick of a crisis: she had discovered a dishonest act committed by a brilliant student who is a protegee of a powerful faculty member.

The "magnificent spinster" is Jane Reid, a teacher who became not only a revered role model but a dear friend to Cam, the narrator of this novel within a novel. After Jane's death, the accidental discovery of poems written by Cam in her youth to Jane prompts a flood of recollections-and frees Cam to imagine in fiction Jane's passionately vibrant life.

One of the most beloved stories ever written about sharing one's life with a cat.

May Sarton's eagerly awaited journals have recorded her life as a single, woman writer--and, in later years, as a woman confronting old age. This chronicle of her pilgrimage through her 82nd year was completed a few months before she died in 1995. Illustrations.

Here are Sarton's observations and reflections, many of which came to her as if by magic during the small hours of the morning. Along with the daily events of writing a letter, appreciating her flowers, taking care of her car Pierrot, these poems wrestle with the larger questions of life and death, the difficulties and rewards of living alone.

For Joanna the month's holiday was to be an escape, a chance to paint and think and release the bitter memories of the war in Greece and of her mother's death.

"I had always imagined a philosophical journal of my seventy-ninth year, dealing with the joys and problems, the doors opening out from old age to unknown efforts and surprises. I looked forward to the year as a potent harvest," May Sarton writes. Assailed by debilitating illnesses, Sarton found herself instead using much of her energy battling for health. Yet, as this record shows, she did after all do what she had wanted to, as she persevered in work, friendships, and love of nature, discovering in the process new landscapes in the country of old age.

"A small, sophisticated, elegantly sentimental journey through a New Hampshire village summer. Our companions are an aging poet, who is sad because he can no longer write-he has lost the joy he used to have in simply being alive-and a young, mischievous female donkey, who is sad because she can't run and play-she has a touch of arthritis. . . . There is a moral, of course, but any moral looks dull next to the simple happiness of the old poet and his long-eared muse."-The New Yorker

May Sarton describes living at her eighteenth-century house in Nelson, New Hampshire-how she acquired it, how it and the garden became part of her.

Grandfathers are generally produced by the birth of grandchildren. But Sprig Wyeth needed more than the arrival of his first grandchild to welcome that role.

Pure lyric poems come rarely in any poet's life.

"Its revelations, its tender frankness, its acutely sensitive observations recommend [this book] to Sarton's growing legion of readers." -Choice

Ethereal and sensual, these intensely vivid poems capture the sights and textures of new places, people, and landscapes as experienced with a poet's fresh eye.

"Her complex ideas are born into verse with the easy, simple beauty that is typical of her stunning lyric style."-Boston Globe

"At long last in early June the Gordons were expected home at Dene's Court, the house in Ireland which Violet Dene Gordon had inherited."

"Sarton's 'art of making exquisite distinctions' and her vulnerability as a human being are her timeless gifts to her readers." -Library Journal

So begins May Sarton's short, swift blow of a novel, about the powerlessness of the old and the rage it can bring. As We Are Now tells the story of Caroline Spencer, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher, mentally strong but physically frail, who has been moved by relatives into a "home." Subjected to subtle humiliations and petty cruelties, sustained for too short a time by the love of another person, she fights back with all she has, and in a powerful climax wins a terrible victory.

"Only a poet and, perhaps, only a young poet could have written this beautiful and distinguished first novel." -New York Times

Set in the academic world of Harvard and Cambridge, this novel dramatizes the plight of the embattled American liberal in the 1950s.

This is the first journal Sarton wrote after she moved in 1973 from New Hampshire to the seacoast of Maine.

Appearing in book form for the first time, this treasure trove of letters illuminates the life of the beloved poet/writer from early childhood into middle age.