May Sarton

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry.

How to write specific forms:
Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka.
Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát.
Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Aleda Shirley. Anne Carson.
The Beowulf Poet. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise.
Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Charles Atkinson. Chase Twichell. Corey Marks.
François Villon Franz Wright. Galway Kinnell. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet.
Jack Gilbert. James Tate. Jane Hirshfield. Jean Vengua. Jorie Graham.
J. Zimmerman. J. Zimmerman (haiku). J. Zimmerman (tanka). Karen Braucher. Karl Shapiro. Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: Britain; USA.
Len Anderson. Les Murray. Li-Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Louise Glück.
Margaret Atwood. Mary Oliver. May Sarton. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). Richard Hugo. Robert Bly.
Sappho. Sara Teasdale. Shiki (haiku). Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn.
Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

May Sarton
Prose. Themes. Time Line. Books.

Themes of her Writing

Themes include:

The female role: the role in society of a female artist.
The Muse: The muse's role in poetic creativity.
Sacrament: Making a sacrament of the ordinary and everyday (flowers, animals, sunlight, friends, and so on) much as does a haiku poet.
Solitude: its value.
Truth: a search for deep and universal truth.

Prose

Writing on Writing (1980)

Five essays:

The School of Babylon.

We go to school to a complex, demanding art so that we may learn a device for discharging tensions and apprehensions which we might not otherwise have strength to bear, and which as it is, become simply transposable energy. So grief itself is transposed into a curious joy.

The Design of a Novel.

The Writing of a Poem.

[T]here is one thing that work sheets on a single poem cannot show ... I mean simply the state of being that precedes any writing. One might ... say that the formal aspects of a poem, the craft aspect, is a game. ... What the work sheets show is the playing out of the game. What they cannot show is that, although poetry is a game, it is also a holy game. ... For the writing of poetry is first of all a way of life, and only secondarily a means of expression. ... What is inspiration, so-called, but the successful wooing of a state of mind?
... [F]or me it [this state of mind] seems to be a floating suspension ... of the will: you cannot write a poem by wanting to write a poem, but only by becoming an instrument and that means not being knotted up to purpose, but open to any accidental and fortuitous event.
... [O]ne might define the poem as the result of a collision between a state of awareness ... and an object. [pp. 39-41]

Revision as Creation.

[R]evision is creation and ... is a far more exciting and revelatory process than the mere manipulation of words and ideas. ... [W]e earn form as we earn understanding; ... metaphor ... is the great teacher of the poet as he wrestles to discover where he really means" [p.59.]

Revising a poem means being possessed by a driving need to clarify a powerful and complex experience by means of image and form. ... and the act of creation implies a conscious exploration and manipulation of what the subconscious brings. [p.63.]

On Growth and Change.

[P]oetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come our to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living.' [p.72.]

Time Line

While her poetry books are listed, only a subset is included of her over-fifty books, which included 17 collections of poetry, 19 novels, 11 journals, two children's books, and essays.

1912.: Born (3 May) in Wondelgem, Belgium.
1914.: Arrived in USA with parents fleeing a German invasion.
1930.: Poetry magazine published her series of sonnets (some to be included in Encounter (1937), her first published book).
1937.: Encounter (her first book of poems and first published book).
1938.: The Single Hound (her first novel) published.
1939.: Inner Landscape (her second book of poems).
1946.: The Bridge of Years (novel) published.
1948.: The Lion and the Rose (her 2nd book of poems).
1950.: Shadow of a Man (her 3rd novel) published.
1952.: Shower of Summer Days (her 4th novel) published.
1954: Wrote I Knew a Phoenix, (memoir).
1955.: Faithful Are the Wounds (novel) published.
1958.: Nomination for a National Book Award for In Time Like Air (poetry) and Faithful Are the Wounds (novel).
1961.: Cloud, Stone, Sun, Vine (poetry).
1966.: A Private Mythology (poetry).
1967.: As Does New Hampshire (poetry).
1968.: Plant Dreaming Deep, particularly well received of her many memoirs.
1971: A Grain of Mustard Seed (poetry).
1973.: Journal of a Solitude, memoir.
1974.: Collected Poems 1930-1973.
1978.: Selected Poems of May Sarton.
1980: Halfway to Silence (poetry).
1981: Writings on Writing (selected essays).
1984: Letters From Maine (poetry).
1994: Coming Into Eighty (poetry), for which she received Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize for Poetry.
1995: Died.

Books

Links and Books

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