The Silence Now: New and Uncollected Early Poems [Paperback]

May Sarton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1990

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sarton is now in her mid-70s, and the title of her luminous new verse collection alludes to its underlying theme: old age. It's a time when she has "more of everything to care for, to maintain." Her powers of observation have deepened: a cat's footfall on the stairs "speaks of an eternal Now." In beautifully simple language shorn of all artifice, she speaks directly and with wisdom about grief, loneliness, death, coming to terms with one's life. There are a few topical poems, such as her inspirational hymn on the AIDS crisis and a sociological piece about the impact of the feminist movement on macho attitudes. This is Sarton's first volume of poetry since Selected Poems (1978). The clear-as-crystal diction of the recent works contrasts sharply with the 19 previously uncollected, much earlier lyrics that employ the tropes of traditional verse (falcons, lutes, towers, kingdoms). Notable among the latter group is a sonnet sequence in which love and poetry are responses to the poet's fear and trembling before God.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In her first book of poems in a decade, Sarton confronts the process of aging and its accompanying losses and gains. As in earlier poems and journals, nature is an ever-present solace in her solitudea condition she both embraces and berates. Yet her seclusion does not keep her from making social commentary in such poems as "AIDS" and "New Year Poem," which tells us: "Unless the gentle inherit the earth/ There will be no earth." The previously unpublished third section of poems includes a sonnet sequence that explores the conflict of love and art. Still writing in her mid-70s, Sarton proves that "If old age is a house of gather,/ Then the hands are full." Grace Bauer, Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (February 17, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393306356
• ISBN-13: 978-0393306354
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,089,410 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.