Plant Dreaming Deep [Paperback]

May Sarton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 1996

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Sensitive, luminous. . . . Love is the genius of this small, but tender and often poignant, book by a woman of many insights. (Brooks Atkinson - New York Times Book Review )

A drama of self-integration. . . . An enlarging, enriching, and clarifying experience. (Boston Herald )

About the Author

May Sarton (1912-1995) was an acclaimed poet, novelist, and memoirist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue of 1st Edition edition (September 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393315517
• ISBN-13: 978-0393315516
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 - July 16, 1995), an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Her parents were science historian George Sarton and his wife, the English artist Mabel Eleanor Elwes. In 1915, her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. She went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started theatre lessons in her late teens. 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. Sarton later moved to York, Maine. She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995. She is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Search of Home, March 9, 2002

By 

Jena Ball "Jena Ball" (North Carolina, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Plant Dreaming Deep (Paperback)

This is Sarton's story of her quest for a home that will provide her with physical shelter and the space, solitude, and spiritual sustenance she requires to write. It is also the story of her search to bring all the various parts of her past - her parents and their European roots, precious physical keepsakes, and the spirits of those who had touched her life deeply - together under one roof.

Sarton finds what she was looking for in a run down old colonial house in the remote township of Nelson, New Hampshire. There she embarks on renovations and adjustments that profoundly change how she sees and lives her life.

For anyone who is interested in Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep offers a revealing look at the artist's inner procees. It also allows us to see her in the context of a community. Over the course of time, we are introduced her many and charismatic neighbors. There is Bessie Lyman who lived in Turkey and speaks Arabic, Quig the deepely introspective artist, and Mildred his distinguished wife, Newt who helps her with woodchucks, and Perley who helps her transform her land into a garden. And then there are the people who are not physically present who nevertheless seem as real to Sarton as her next door neighbors. Set against the backdrop of the New England seasons, and defined by the various events and crises that occur in her personal and professional lives, the writing is rich with experience and Sarton's own peculiar blend of poetics and matter-of-fact whimsy. This is a book that any fan of Sarton will enjoy.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars subtle lessons, April 21, 2005

By 

J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plant Dreaming Deep (Paperback)

I don't know who reads May Sarton nowadays (hopefully at least students are still imbibing) for hers is a chosen art beholden to stillness and its plenitude, and we know the short shrift given to reflection in an oversized disposable culture. I do know that everything she's written holds magical lessons for every writer - her poems and journals are steeped in subtle lessons of patience, fearlessness and conscience. Plant Dreaming Deep (a title intended both as admonition and hopeful reflection) is a masterpiece. Part memoir, journal, survival guide, it's a kind of holy book for seekers searching the scrub of rocks and weeds. Sarton's intrepid gift has always been to secure for us the infinite contained in the small and unnoticed, to plant within the careful reader a kind of loving understanding to bloom unexpectedly farther on down the road, easing the load even as it deepens the search. Above all else, hers is an enlightening art that cannot lead astray. Quietly artful black and white photographs (of house and garden and friends - most by Lotte Jacobi and Eleanor Blair) are among the treasure found in the 1983 Norton paperback edition I own. Sarton's voice never fails; it's always rich and reasonable and true. It's easy to surmise that she's a overlooked writer, but if you really want what you're looking for, read May Sarton. Once born inside you, she's faithful to the end.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars quiet, thoughtful, moving, May 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Plant Dreaming Deep (Paperback)

May Sarton is not for everyone, and in this text she goes even deeper into the contemplative stillness that marks her work. She writes beautifully about her life and the living creatures (human, vegetative and otherwise) that fill it. For some strange reason I read this book for the first time as a teenager, and it was a great antidote to the hormone-induced fervor of adolescent life. It actually made me look forward to what life would be like once I got old...