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Collected Poems, 1930–1993
A comprehensive volume collecting May Sarton's poetry from over sixty years of work
This collection spanning six decades exposes the charm and clarity of Sarton's poetry to the fullest. Arranged in chronological order, it follows the transformation of her writing through a wide range of poetic forms and styles. Her poetry meditates on topics including the American landscape, aging, nature, the act of creating art, and self-study. This compendium from one of America's most beloved poets will enthrall readers.
This collection spanning six decades exposes the charm and clarity of Sarton's poetry to the fullest. Arranged in chronological order, it follows the transformation of her writing through a wide range of poetic forms and styles. Her poetry meditates on topics including the American landscape, aging, nature, the act of creating art, and self-study. This compendium from one of America's most beloved poets will enthrall readers.
659 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1974
43 people are currently reading
225 people want to read
About the author
May Sarton
154 books596 followersMay Sarton was born on May 3, 1912, 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. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton boldly came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her later memoir, Journal of a Solitude, was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton died in York, Maine, on July 16, 1995.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 2, 2014
This is my first experience of May Sarton's writing (I am also currently reading her Journal of a Solitude) and it has been a exciting one. Sarton writes on many topics, with the natural world being one of her favorites and most insistent. She also takes us with her around the world as she travels, along with her in her struggles with her emotions and with her quest for love. I have quoted parts of several poems in my updates and am unsure about citing more now or this review might go on indefinitely. So many of these poems seemed to speak directly to me as a woman, a New Englander and as a woman who is no longer young. But I will cite a few.
from New Year Resolve
The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change.
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.
Let silence in.
from On Sark
Islands are for people who are islands,
Who have always been detached from the main
For a purpose, or because they crave
The free within the framed as poets do,
The solitary for whom being alone
Is not a loneliness but fertile good,
Here on this island I feel myself at home.
from A winter Notebook
On this dark cold morning
After the ice storm
A male pheasant
Steps precisely across the snow.
His red and gold,
The warmth and shine of him
In the white freeze,
Explosive!
A firecracker pheasant
Opens the new year.
Perhaps the advent of November has called me to these cold-weather poems!
And one final example from Things Seen:
A bluebird sudden as the flash of though,
Embodied azure never to be caught.
The flowing white-on-white transparency
Of light through petals of a peony.
The shining ripple through tall meadow grass
Under the wind's invisible caress.
Unshadowed, vulnerable, smiling peace
Caught in one glance at a sleeping face.
Within love's new-sprung, light-shot, vivid green
My eyes are open. Angels can be seen.
I strongly recommend this collection to poetry readers among you and those who are considering trying some poetry. There is something here for everyone.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
from New Year Resolve
The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change.
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.
Let silence in.
from On Sark
Islands are for people who are islands,
Who have always been detached from the main
For a purpose, or because they crave
The free within the framed as poets do,
The solitary for whom being alone
Is not a loneliness but fertile good,
Here on this island I feel myself at home.
from A winter Notebook
On this dark cold morning
After the ice storm
A male pheasant
Steps precisely across the snow.
His red and gold,
The warmth and shine of him
In the white freeze,
Explosive!
A firecracker pheasant
Opens the new year.
Perhaps the advent of November has called me to these cold-weather poems!
And one final example from Things Seen:
A bluebird sudden as the flash of though,
Embodied azure never to be caught.
The flowing white-on-white transparency
Of light through petals of a peony.
The shining ripple through tall meadow grass
Under the wind's invisible caress.
Unshadowed, vulnerable, smiling peace
Caught in one glance at a sleeping face.
Within love's new-sprung, light-shot, vivid green
My eyes are open. Angels can be seen.
I strongly recommend this collection to poetry readers among you and those who are considering trying some poetry. There is something here for everyone.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
December 12, 2014
This is the first time I’ve ever read a poet’s collected works. In some ways, reading the volume all the way through over a matter of weeks was not a wise choice; this is the kind of book that needs months, even years, spent on a bedside table – time to live with the words, noticing patterns and letting them enter your soul. Reading an ebook with an expiry date was not ideal; I will need to revisit this book in paper format another time. But here are some initial thoughts.
This covers six decades; over that time Sarton’s style changed significantly. She tries out lots of different voices and structures. Sometimes her work struck me as old-fashioned: “O” as an exclamation, or Innocence and Wisdom as personifications. I didn’t like the poems where she uses an amateurish ABAB rhyming scheme (“Moving In”), nor those that attempt courtly love (“A Divorce of Lovers”). She can be pretty mawkish in the tributes to her dead cats (“An Elegy for Scrabble” and “Wilderness Lost – For Bramble, my cat”); some poems written for Christmas are cheesy; and “AIDS” (1986) lacks subtlety. “Ballads of the Traveler” is in a false question-and-answer format. So these, right off the bat, are my reasons for not giving 5 stars.
But there is also some truly wonderful material in here, appropriating a number of traditions:
• Feminist: “For it is surely a lifetime’s work / This learning to be a woman” (“My Sisters, O My Sisters”)
• Interwar period (“Homage to Flanders” is set in her native Belgium.)
• Liturgical: “God of the empty room, / Thy will be done” (“The Lion and the Rose”) and the refrain “We only keep what we lose” (“O Saisons! O Chateaux!”); “Annunciation” (“No one is perfect here, no one is well: / It is a time of fear and immolation.”)
• Travel / landscape studies: The Lion and the Rose (1938-48) contains a lot of landscape studies of America’s southern and western states (I especially liked “In Texas”: “In Texas there’s so much space words have a way / Of getting lost in the silence before they’re spoken”). “Italian Garden” is playfully structured around alliterative phrases and rhetorical questions. A Private Mythology (1961-6) has an especially rich vein of poems set in Japan, India and Greece. I don’t know nearly enough about Japanese poetry to be able to say so with any conviction, but I suspect the Japanese poems are imitative of traditional literary style. There’s also a gentle eroticism here, particularly in “Kyoko.”
I noticed a few recurring themes:
• Depression vs. happiness. The “Autumn Sonnets” series is gorgeous, definitely one of my favorite sections: “If I can take the dark with open eyes / And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange.” “So let the world go, but hold fast to joy” (“A Recognition”).
• Reflections on grief and suffering, including the loss of her mother. “If the one certainty is suffering, / And if the only absolute is doubt, / From these alone belief must be wrung” (“Take Anguish for Companion”).
• Finding the self, solitude and her New Hampshire home. “I dare my self, within this native shell / To live close to the marrow” (“Reflections by a Fire”); “It is time I came back to my real life” (“Return”); “Now I Become Myself”; “Keeping the balance between loneliness / And the dark heart of silence that can bless” (“Autumn Sonnets”)
• Rhythms of work and play, becoming lost in a task (flow). “Converting work into this passionate play” (gardening); “And yet I see eternity’s long wink / In these elusive games, and only there: / When I can so suspend myself to think, / I seem suspended in undying air” (flower arranging).
as well as some subtle echoes of other poets:
• Wendell Berry: “farmer and poet / Share a good deal, although they may not know it” (“A Recognition”)
• W.B. Yeats (“Memory of Swans”)
“From All Our Journeys”, with its theme of exile, probably meant most to me:
Some additional favorites:
• “Address to the Heart” (“you will arise from this infection / changed, / as one returns from death.”)
• “Winter Evening” (“The evenings are spun glass these winter days … people peer out just before they pull / The comfortable shades and shut themselves away / From all that’s ominous and beautiful”)
• “The Work of Happiness”
• “The Land of Silence”
• “Because What I Want Most is Permanence”
• “Somersault”: a tightrope walker lends the image of trading burdens for lightness; “Is it a question of discipline or grace?”
• “The Country of Pain” (an allusion to Alphonse Daudet?)
• “New Year Poem” (“So much has died that had to die this year. // We are dying away from things. / It is a necessity—we have to do it”)
Open Road Media have done an outstanding job of turning the Collected Poems into ebook format, including a very helpful, interactive table of contents. I’ve read two of their Sarton ebooks, and now have Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing to look forward to.
This covers six decades; over that time Sarton’s style changed significantly. She tries out lots of different voices and structures. Sometimes her work struck me as old-fashioned: “O” as an exclamation, or Innocence and Wisdom as personifications. I didn’t like the poems where she uses an amateurish ABAB rhyming scheme (“Moving In”), nor those that attempt courtly love (“A Divorce of Lovers”). She can be pretty mawkish in the tributes to her dead cats (“An Elegy for Scrabble” and “Wilderness Lost – For Bramble, my cat”); some poems written for Christmas are cheesy; and “AIDS” (1986) lacks subtlety. “Ballads of the Traveler” is in a false question-and-answer format. So these, right off the bat, are my reasons for not giving 5 stars.
But there is also some truly wonderful material in here, appropriating a number of traditions:
• Feminist: “For it is surely a lifetime’s work / This learning to be a woman” (“My Sisters, O My Sisters”)
• Interwar period (“Homage to Flanders” is set in her native Belgium.)
• Liturgical: “God of the empty room, / Thy will be done” (“The Lion and the Rose”) and the refrain “We only keep what we lose” (“O Saisons! O Chateaux!”); “Annunciation” (“No one is perfect here, no one is well: / It is a time of fear and immolation.”)
• Travel / landscape studies: The Lion and the Rose (1938-48) contains a lot of landscape studies of America’s southern and western states (I especially liked “In Texas”: “In Texas there’s so much space words have a way / Of getting lost in the silence before they’re spoken”). “Italian Garden” is playfully structured around alliterative phrases and rhetorical questions. A Private Mythology (1961-6) has an especially rich vein of poems set in Japan, India and Greece. I don’t know nearly enough about Japanese poetry to be able to say so with any conviction, but I suspect the Japanese poems are imitative of traditional literary style. There’s also a gentle eroticism here, particularly in “Kyoko.”
I noticed a few recurring themes:
• Depression vs. happiness. The “Autumn Sonnets” series is gorgeous, definitely one of my favorite sections: “If I can take the dark with open eyes / And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange.” “So let the world go, but hold fast to joy” (“A Recognition”).
• Reflections on grief and suffering, including the loss of her mother. “If the one certainty is suffering, / And if the only absolute is doubt, / From these alone belief must be wrung” (“Take Anguish for Companion”).
• Finding the self, solitude and her New Hampshire home. “I dare my self, within this native shell / To live close to the marrow” (“Reflections by a Fire”); “It is time I came back to my real life” (“Return”); “Now I Become Myself”; “Keeping the balance between loneliness / And the dark heart of silence that can bless” (“Autumn Sonnets”)
• Rhythms of work and play, becoming lost in a task (flow). “Converting work into this passionate play” (gardening); “And yet I see eternity’s long wink / In these elusive games, and only there: / When I can so suspend myself to think, / I seem suspended in undying air” (flower arranging).
as well as some subtle echoes of other poets:
• Wendell Berry: “farmer and poet / Share a good deal, although they may not know it” (“A Recognition”)
• W.B. Yeats (“Memory of Swans”)
“From All Our Journeys”, with its theme of exile, probably meant most to me:
I too have known the inward disturbance of exile,
The great peril of being at home nowhere,
The dispersed center, the dividing love,
Not here, nor there, leaping across ocean,
Turning, returning to each strong allegiance,
American, but with this difference, parting.
Some additional favorites:
• “Address to the Heart” (“you will arise from this infection / changed, / as one returns from death.”)
• “Winter Evening” (“The evenings are spun glass these winter days … people peer out just before they pull / The comfortable shades and shut themselves away / From all that’s ominous and beautiful”)
• “The Work of Happiness”
• “The Land of Silence”
• “Because What I Want Most is Permanence”
• “Somersault”: a tightrope walker lends the image of trading burdens for lightness; “Is it a question of discipline or grace?”
• “The Country of Pain” (an allusion to Alphonse Daudet?)
• “New Year Poem” (“So much has died that had to die this year. // We are dying away from things. / It is a necessity—we have to do it”)
Open Road Media have done an outstanding job of turning the Collected Poems into ebook format, including a very helpful, interactive table of contents. I’ve read two of their Sarton ebooks, and now have Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing to look forward to.
December 21, 2021
I have invested in reading May Sarton with near religious fervor. She has until now resided in the peripheral… but delving into the nuanced work of this incomparable and conflicted artist revealed her to be an incomparable poet and a creative icon—over and over again, consistently killing me softly with every word. I wish it were that Hermione Lee writes her biography.
August 22, 2016
Competently written, engaging, and occasionally insightful. Stylistically without much experimentation or innovation. Nevertheless an interesting compilation of more than 60 years of American poetry.
August 3, 2018
The beginning of the hefty tome of May Sarton’s complete poetic output includes an interesting publisher’s note, which converses upon what poetry means to us in the modern world. The reading of poetry underwent such change during the period in which Sarton was writing, and it is fascinating to be able to see how her work changed from her beginnings in 1930, to the final poems here, which were written in 1993.
Each collection has been arranged chronologically, and Sarton’s writing from the first is beautiful. Consider the following lines from wondrous poem ‘She Shall Be Called Woman’: “She lay quite still / and leaned / against the great curve / of the earth, / and her breast / was like a fruit / bursten of its own sweetness.”
Sarton’s use of surrounding landscapes, imagery and vocabulary is masterful throughout, as can be seen in the poem ‘Meditation in Sunlight’: “Far all is blue and strange / The sky looks down on snow / And meets the mountain range / Where time is light not shadow’.
Throughout, many different themes have been considered – architecture, love, what it means to be a woman, death and loss, the coming of the seasons, the passing of time, the grandeur of America, dancing, religion, teaching and learning, and the notion of experience. So many different poetic techniques have been used throughout too that whilst this is a wonderful volume to dip in and out of, it can also be read all at once.
Each collection has been arranged chronologically, and Sarton’s writing from the first is beautiful. Consider the following lines from wondrous poem ‘She Shall Be Called Woman’: “She lay quite still / and leaned / against the great curve / of the earth, / and her breast / was like a fruit / bursten of its own sweetness.”
Sarton’s use of surrounding landscapes, imagery and vocabulary is masterful throughout, as can be seen in the poem ‘Meditation in Sunlight’: “Far all is blue and strange / The sky looks down on snow / And meets the mountain range / Where time is light not shadow’.
Throughout, many different themes have been considered – architecture, love, what it means to be a woman, death and loss, the coming of the seasons, the passing of time, the grandeur of America, dancing, religion, teaching and learning, and the notion of experience. So many different poetic techniques have been used throughout too that whilst this is a wonderful volume to dip in and out of, it can also be read all at once.
February 1, 2025
This collection of Sarton’s poems covers a very long period and reflects many different stages of her life. I’m unsure how to comment really. I recognise she is a poet of stature and I’m glad to have exposed myself to a body of her work. But subjectively, it didn’t leave me wanting more. There was a good handful of poems which I highlighted and kept for their brilliance and beauty, capturing something powerfully in nature or the human experience. And the rest left me feeling indifferent. Disappointed. I think I prefer her journals. I feel sad because I really wanted to love her poetry. I suppose most poetry books only give a handful of arresting moments, it is all so subjective, but I had built up such a strong impression of this woman from her other writing, that I think I had an unrealistic expectation. The three stars are for the excellence of the pieces I liked. 😊
April 30, 2025
“there are griefs so still
none knows how deep they lie,
endured, never expended.
there are old griefs so proud
they never speak a word;
they never can be mended”
“and if love can be trusted to last out,
then it must first be disciplined and reasoned
to take all weathers, absences, and doubt.”
“she bore the wound of desire
and it did not close,
though she had tried
to burn her hand
and turn one pain
into a simpler pain—
yet it did not close.”
none knows how deep they lie,
endured, never expended.
there are old griefs so proud
they never speak a word;
they never can be mended”
“and if love can be trusted to last out,
then it must first be disciplined and reasoned
to take all weathers, absences, and doubt.”
“she bore the wound of desire
and it did not close,
though she had tried
to burn her hand
and turn one pain
into a simpler pain—
yet it did not close.”
June 23, 2021
The poems of a lifetime. My favorite poem is in this collection. Many poems touched me in this collection, but none as much as "Now I Become Myself".
July 20, 2016
What a lovely collection for both fans of Sarton and those completely new to her. I love having e-poetry collections, because poetry is the perfect thing for when you just have a few minutes somewhere--stuck in line, waiting for your kid's practice to finish, waiting for yoga class to start, etc. Forget answering emails and checking Facebook. Immerse yourself in a good poem, like the ones in this Sarton collection. In fairly brief poems, she explores death and love and other big topics through the very particular. Who can resist lines like:
Every kiss, every word they speak holds death in it: They are committing murder who merely live.
Milton, keeping the dark night of the spirit full of stars!
The evenings are spun glass these winter days.
Hunting the ocean's rumor till you hear it well
Those are just a few of my highlights in the first 10% of the book. Recommended.
[Review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.]
Every kiss, every word they speak holds death in it: They are committing murder who merely live.
Milton, keeping the dark night of the spirit full of stars!
The evenings are spun glass these winter days.
Hunting the ocean's rumor till you hear it well
Those are just a few of my highlights in the first 10% of the book. Recommended.
[Review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.]
May 30, 2009
Ah, May Sarton--barely a word about her, of late.
And what a shame. Her words flow, crest, ebb, crash. She is a wonder with alliteration, and with form.
Consider her "We'll to the Woods No More, the Laurels Are Cut Down"with the sub-heading, "At Kent State", a searing indictment of the outdated(was it EVER valid?) coda by which we once lived. And so many, died. The poem ends, chillingly, with:
"The war games are over,
And all the laurel's gone.
Dead warrior, dead lover,
Was the war lost or won?
What say you, blasted head?
No answer from the dead.
From politics, to lovers, to her mother's death, Ms. Sarton begs, cajoles, entreats us, to listen. Reading Ms. Sarton is like standing on a beach in the Northeast, and refusing to hear the gulls, or the waves.She is unassailable.
Read her.
And what a shame. Her words flow, crest, ebb, crash. She is a wonder with alliteration, and with form.
Consider her "We'll to the Woods No More, the Laurels Are Cut Down"with the sub-heading, "At Kent State", a searing indictment of the outdated(was it EVER valid?) coda by which we once lived. And so many, died. The poem ends, chillingly, with:
"The war games are over,
And all the laurel's gone.
Dead warrior, dead lover,
Was the war lost or won?
What say you, blasted head?
No answer from the dead.
From politics, to lovers, to her mother's death, Ms. Sarton begs, cajoles, entreats us, to listen. Reading Ms. Sarton is like standing on a beach in the Northeast, and refusing to hear the gulls, or the waves.She is unassailable.
Read her.
April 23, 2014
I was not familiar with the work of May Sarton, so this was a wonderful opportunity to acquaint myself with her poetry. She has simple, powerful verse, quite classical, with carefully contained emotions - yet they are all there, if you know how to look for them. Loving, careful observations of nature. Not a volume to read in one gulp, but one to dip into again and again.
August 2, 2014
Lovely, touching, endearing. Every poem is clearly written from the heart and means something to the author. For those who enjoy beautiful poetry, this would make a lovely addition to your collection. I enjoyed reading this very much. Nicely presented. I received an evaluation copy in exchange for my opinion.
February 20, 2017
This is a book that I pick up often. I have been a fan of May Sarton for years and fine her writings bring me confort.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews