The Poetry of May Sarton Volume One: Letters from Maine, Inner Landscape, and Halfway to Silence
239
The Poetry of May Sarton Volume One: Letters from Maine, Inner Landscape, and Halfway to Silence
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Overview
Letters from Maine: A rugged coastline provides a stark background for Sarton’s images of a tragically brief love. With vulnerability and emotional depth, she explores the willingness to devote everything to a new love, as well as the despair at the memory of what is left over when it fades.
Inner Landscape: This collection of May Sarton’s poems displays her inimitable mix of stately verse and depth of feeling that lurks beneath every line, creating a tantalizing, magnetically charged distance between reader and poet.
Halfway to Silence: After decades of writing flowing lyric verse, May Sarton’s style turned to short, vibrant bursts of poetry. These condensed poems are rife with exuberant impressions of nature and of love, including two of her most acclaimed works, “Old Lovers at the Ballet” and “Of the Muse.”
Recognized as a true pioneer in lesbian literature, “Sarton’s poems enter and illuminate every natural corner of our lives. . . . So strong in their faith and in their positive response to the human condition that they will outlast much of the fashionable, cynical poetry of our ear” (James Martin).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504057103 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 11/20/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 239 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her last memoir, Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.
May Sarton (1912–1995) was born on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. Her novels A Shower of Summer Days, The Birth of a Grandfather, and Faithful Are the Wounds, as well as her poetry collection In Time Like Air, all received nominations for the National Book Award.
An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her last memoir, Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Part I Letters from Maine
1
Yes, I am home again, and alone.
Today wrote letters then took my dog Out through the sad November woods.
The leaves have fallen while I was away,
The ground is golden while above The maples are stripped of all color.
The ornamental cherries, red when I left,
Have paled now to translucent yellow.
Yes, I am home again, but home has changed.
And I within this cultivated space That I have made my own, feel at a loss,
Disoriented. All the safe doors Have come unlocked and too much light Has flooded every room. Where can I go?
Not toward you three thousand miles away Lost in your own rich life, given me For an hour.
Read between the lines.
Then meet me in the silence if you can,
The long silence of winter when I shall Make poems out of nothing, out of loss,
And at times hear your healing laughter.
2
November opens the sky. I look out On an immense perimeter of ocean, blue On every side, through the great oak That screens it off all summer, see surf Edging the rocks white on the other side.
The November muse who is with me now Gives me wisdom and laughter, also clarity.
Aware of old age for the first time, accept That I am old, and this sudden passion must be A single sharp cry, torn out of me, as when A few days ago on the ferry to Vancouver I saw an eagle fly down in a great arc,
His fierce head flashing white among the gulls.
The ardor of seventy years seizes the moment And must be held free, outside time,
Must learn to bear with the cleared space,
The futureless flame, and use it well,
Must rejoice in the still, quiet air And this ineluctable solitude.
3
No letter from the muse. Time out.
Nevertheless I am floated on her presence,
Her strong reality, swung out above Everything else that happens. In the mail News of two brutal murders, and a wedding,
News of a poet friend in deep depression,
News from strangers reading my poems And comforted, they say. I am suspended,
Wake before dawn to watch the sun come Up from leaden waters every morning.
Turning the whole sky orange as it rises.
Slowly I learn the self who is emerging As though newborn after a sterile summer.
Alone? Perhaps. But filled to the brim With all that comes and goes, rejoicing.
Now there is someone to hold the kite As it is tossed by the wind, keep it floating.
I manage better than I have for months to be Open and balanced. The muse is there To let the kite fly as high as it can,
Then slowly draw it in when there is peril.
So many times this summer it was broken,
Caught up in a tree or unable to fly.
The kite, marvelous muse, is in your hands.
4
There was your voice, astonishment,
Falling into the silence suddenly As though there were no continent Between its warmth and me at my desk,
Bringing joy to the roots, a giant gift Across time. Five in the morning there.
Three thousand miles to cover instantly.
How is it done? How for that matter Did it all happen when we met?
Time telescoped, years cast away,
And primal being finding this present Where we were lifted beyond age,
Outside responsibilities, newfound,
In a way stranded, in a way home at last?
And in your tender laughter at me Some total acceptance of all that I am,
Of all that is to be or not ever to be As time goes on and we are lost Or found in it over and over again.
5
From a distance the ocean looks calm,
Gray and unbroken stretching out to Spain,
But it is seamed with hidden tumult.
The long swells come in slowly from below And build to immense fluid walls Driven in by some deep pulse far away,
Ominous while they stand suspended Then at the rock edge tumble, broken,
And send up shattered towers of white foam.
Muse, do you feel the tumult over there?
Or is it only steadfastness of mountains Today that holds you still and silent?
While I, like one of the black ducks Bobbing out there, must keep my balance,
Stay clear of the rocks as they do Who know how to ride this tumult safely And play its perils like a game.
6
"When a woman feels alone, when the room Is full of daemons," the Nootka tribe Tells us, "The Old Woman will be there."
She has come to me over three thousand miles And what does she have to tell me, troubled
"by phantoms in the night?" Is she really here?
What is the saving word from so deep in the past,
From as deep as the ancient root of the redwood,
From as deep as the primal bed of the ocean,
From as deep as a woman's heart sprung open Again through a hard birth or a hard death?
Here under the shock of love, I am open To you, Primal Spirit, one with rock and wave,
One with the survivors of flood and fire,
Who have rebuilt their homes a million times,
Who have lost their children and borne them again.
The words I hear are strength, laughter, endurance.
Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself.
There in the rootbed of fertility,
World without end, as the legend tells it.
Under the words you are my silence.
7
Who has spoken of the unicorn in old age?
She who was hunted for her strangeness,
Androgynous, fleeing her pursuers, hopeful When she was young that she could bow her horn Before the perfect innocence and purity Of a virgin being. Who has wondered Whether she did find shelter at last?
Or does she wander still, searching human faces For the one who might speak of her In her own language, look into her eyes And gentle the wildness once and for all?
It may be that through that fervent pursuit The unicorn has come to look for wisdom And experience rather than innocence,
That she looks for a woman who has suffered And become like gold, the dross beaten out,
As round and whole as a wedding ring,
A woman who has laughed and wept her way Through the dark wood and across the lake,
Who has borne children, and who is now Marvelously open, transparent, and unafraid.
Who has imagined the unicorn grown old?
8
When I heard you say in a brisk voice
"Perhaps we should never meet again,"
The sun turned black, the tide froze,
I could feel the blood withering in my veins,
A breakdown of cells, death in my body.
It took an instant, three thousand miles,
And your voice alive in the room, to do it.
And now after days muffled in distress,
I must try to speak words when the reality Is an immense silence, and nothing can be said.
Perhaps it is, after all, delusion and madness,
The poet forcing her muse to pay attention,
Forcing too much out of an hour of bliss,
Unable "to take love lightly as the grass Grows on the weirs," trying to hold back the tide From ebbing into the deeps. Not possible.
Nevertheless is my answer to your never.
Whatever the reasons they are only reason.
And here in the universe of souls Reason is not the master of the moment,
Was not when we met and stared into each other's eyes Like sleepers woken suddenly out of a dream,
Suffering a blaze of light. Was that madness?
Was it delusion? No, a gift from the goddess.
Nothing is possible. Nothing is real, you think.
Nevertheless ... nevertheless ... nevertheless ...
9
The muse of course airs out the inner world,
Without her presence somewhere a cell With no window, where the poet struggles,
Snake biting its tail, Narcissus Drowned in his own image. The muse Ripples the waters, opens doors,
Lets in sunlight, dazzles and delights.
She frees the poet from all obligations,
Guilt, doubt, to wander alone by the sea Picking up shells, or contemplating mosses In the woods, free to be herself, to sing,
Uncontaminated by duties, projected outward,
Able to pay attention to the smallest stir Of wind in the silence, to observe birds.
When the muse appears after long absence Everything stops except the poem. It rises In an unbroken wave and topples to silence.
There is no way to make it happen by will.
No muse appears when invoked, dire need Will not rouse her pity.
She comes when she cand,
She too, no doubt, rising from the sea Like Aphrodite on her shell when it is time,
When the impersonal tide bears her to the shore To play a difficult role she has not chosen,
To free a prisoner she has no reason to love.
What power is at work, then, what key Opens the door into these mysteries?
10
The muse is here, she who dazzled the air For months at a distance now gives her presence To this house, lies on the terrace wrapped In her own thoughts, an icy visage, silent.
No harsh or tender word could now unblind her.
She has chosen not to see and even not to be,
Medusa who has frozen herself into a trance.
It happened too long ago, should have been buried Then like a meteor fallen in an open field,
Having no usefulness except as a sample Of what goes on occasionally in the sky,
Indifferent to human affairs. Yet she came Who knows for what purpose? She is here.
All day amenities fall on my head like hail.
The house is a black hole. At night I know The muse as Medusa plays her cruel games But cannot blight the center where I live,
And where I know, have always known, the paths Of grace cannot be forced, yet meteors will fall,
A blaze of light, and always when least looked for.
So deal with absence. Survivors learn it.
Eat grass. I know my way on barren islands,
Lie down on rock at night and read the stars.
Never curse the curse, or forget the blessing.
Since all things move together to grave ends We need not even ask where we are bound.
Let the muse bury the dead. For that she came.
Who walks the earth in joy and poverty?
Who then has risen? The tomb is empty.
Part II A Winter Garland
Twelve Below
A bitter gale Over frozen snow Burns the skin like hail.
It is twelve below.
Too cold to live Too cold to die Warm animals wait And make no cry.
Their feathers puff Their eyes are bright Their fur expands.
Warm animals wait.
They make no sign They waste no breath In this cold country Between life and death.
Dead Center
Temperature zero, the road an icy glare,
The fields once ermine soft, now hard and bright.
Even my cat's paws find no footing there.
And I sit watching barren winter sunlight Travel the empty house. I sit and stare.
This is dead center. There is no escape,
And like the starving deer I must survive On what each day may bring of somber hope —
For them, a hidden yew. They keep alive.
For me, a letter to soften the grim landscape.
Beyond this frozen world the ocean lies Immense, impersonal, and calm,
Perimeter I measure with my eyes.
To the horizon's rim it is blue balm,
Dark lively blue under the wan skies.
This is dead center. I am the one Who holds it in myself, the one who sees And can contain ocean and sky and sun And keep myself alive in the deep freeze With a warm uncontaminated vision.
Temperature zero, and death on my mind.
I contemplate the earthquakes and the fears,
The leaps into the dark, lovers unkind,
The wild hopes and the damaged atmospheres.
They could not stop the blood or make me blind.
It is all in myself, hope and despair.
The heartbeat never stops. The veins are filled And my warm blood in the cold winter air Will not be frozen or be winter-killed.
Poetry comes back with the starving deer.
Shell
Outside,
The sea's susurration,
Inside,
A terrible silence As though everything had died,
One of those shells Abandoned by the creature Who lived there once And opened to the tide.
Lift it to an ear And you will hear A long reverberation In its tiny cave,
The rumor of a wave Long ago broken And drawn back Into the ocean —
And so, with love.
Correspondence
Faces at the window Am I never to be without you?
Cries for help in the night Am I never to sleep?
Why do I feel compelled To answer, day after day,
Answer the stranger At the window?
In the hope that shared pain Can become healing?
That if I spend myself Without stint I shall be made whole?
That the long woe Will come to an end?
Or the gift come back —
Poetry, forgiveness?
Faces at the window Am I never to be without you?
Cries for help in the night Am I never to sleep?
I have no more springs No living water For your spent wells,
I am stiff and frozen In the winter ice.
It is time I heard My own voice weeping,
Felt the warm tears Of absolution On my icy cheek.
It is time you let me sleep The unhealable Into the dark.
But how to do it?
It would take a pickaxe now To break through to the source.
Snow Fall
With no wind blowing It sifts gently down,
Enclosing my world in A cool white down,
A tenderness of snowing.
It falls and falls like sleep Till wakeful eyes can close On all the waste and loss As peace comes in and flows,
Snow-dreaming what I keep.
Silence assumes the air And the five senses all Are wafted on the fall To somewhere magical Beyond hope and despair.
There is nothing to do But drift now, more or less On some great lovingness,
On something that does bless,
The silent, tender snow.
For Monet
Poets, too, are crazed by light,
How to capture its changes,
How to be accurate in seizing What has been caught by the eye In an instant's flash —
Light through a petal,
Iridescence of clouds before sunrise.
They, too, are haunted by the need To hold the fleeting still In a design —
That vermillion under the haystack,
Struck at sunset,
Melting into the golden air Yet perfectly defined,
An illuminated transience.
Today my house is lost in milk,
The milky veils of a blizzard.
The trees have turned pale.
There are no shadows.
That is the problem — no shadows At all.
It is harder to see what one sees Than anyone knows.
Monet knew, spent a lifetime Trying to undazzle the light And pin it down.
The Cold Night
In the time of great tension and of splendor,
I knew not whether I was joy or grief,
Whether swung out on madness or belief,
Or some difficult truth to bend — or Whether it was the relentless thrust Of withheld poetry bursting my chest.
But in the time of splendor was alone In a strange land of fire and broken stone,
And the long fading light across bright snow,
Until if you did speak, I did not know,
Caught up by some angelic voice or choir Under huge skies where shone no single star.
Now all is silence. Where have you gone Whose heartbeat did reverberate through stone?
Listen, listen! The wild foxes bark.
Venus is rising, tranquil, through the dark.
Seascape
In endless variations on a theme The waves come in and lace the rocky shore.
One after one long ripples rise and spread Until they break in necklaces of foam Or fountain up in spume, an endless store —
The gentle sea is singing in my head.
High in my study I look down and through The great oak and its branches naked now.
They accent the whole scene and unify With strong black lines blue against paler blue,
And in the foreground shadow the late snow.
Spring in the air has come to rinse my eye.
Newly aware and open to the scene I hold fast to the little I can hold,
A long continuum so like the play Of the incessant waves, unbroken theme Of love, love without a fold Murmuring under silence like the sea.
Excerpted from "The Poetry of May Sarton Volume One"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Publisher's Note,
LETTERS FROM MAINE,
Part I Letters from Maine,
A Farewell,
Letters from Maine:,
"Yes, I am home again, and alone.",
"November opens the sky. I look out",
"No letter from the muse. Time out.",
"There was your voice, astonishment",
"From a distance the ocean looks calm",
"When a woman feels alone, when the room",
"Who has spoken of the unicorn in old age?",
"When I heard you say in a brisk voice",
"The muse of course airs out the inner world",
"The muse is here, she who dazzled the air",
Part II A Winter Garland,
Twelve Below,
Dead Center,
Shell,
Correspondence,
Snow Fall,
For Monet,
The Cold Night,
Seascape,
After a Winter's Silence,
Moose in the Morning,
The Wood Pigeons,
Elegy: The Rose-Breasted Grosbeak,
April in Maine,
Part III Letters to Myself,
For Laurie,
Mourning to Do,
Survivors,
Who Knows Where the Joy Goes,
Ut Unium Sint,
An Elegy for Scrabble,
Cold Spring,
Intimation,
Letters to Myself,
The Seed,
The Consummation,
The Image is a Garden,
INNER LANDSCAPE,
I. From this Nettle,
Prayer Before Work,
Invocation,
Architectural Image,
Landscape,
Record,
Lament,
Understatement,
Granted This World,
II. Sonnets,
Summary,
Summary,
Conversation on the Telephone,
Address to the Heart,
Transition,
Translation,
The Vanquished,
Memory of Swans,
After Silence,
Canticles,
Winter Landscape,
From Men Who Died Deluded,
Afternoon on Washington Street,
The Puritan,
From a Train Window,
Static Landscape,
Considerations,
Winter Evening,
Map for Despair,
You Who Ask Peace,
The Pride of Trees,
Greeting,
A Letter to James Stephens,
HALFWAY TO SILENCE,
I,
After All These Years,
Two Songs,
The Oriole,
Old Trees,
A Voice,
The Balcony,
The Myths Return,
Time for Rich Silence,
Three Things,
The Lady of the Lake,
First Autumn,
Mal du Départ,
II,
Jealousy,
Control,
Along a Brook,
Beggar, Queen, and Ghost,
The Country of Pain,
Out of Touch,
At The Black Rock,
III,
The Turning of the Wind,
After the Storm,
Love,
Of Molluscs,
June Wind,
The Summer Tree,
Late Autumn,
The Geese,
Autumn Sonnets,
Pruning the Orchard,
Old Lovers at the Ballet,
IV,
On Sark,
In Suffolk,
A Winter Notebook,
Of the Muse,
Index,
A Biography of May Sarton,