“In the mail a letter from a twelve-year-old child, enclosing poems, her mother having asked her to ask my opinion. This child does really look at things, and I can write something helpful, I think. But it is troubling how many people expect applause, recognition, when they have not even begun to learn a craft. Instant success is the order of the day; “I want it now!” I wonder whether this is not our corruption by machines. Machines do things quickly and outside the natural rhythm of life, and we are indignant if a car doesn’t start at the first try. So the few things that we still do, such as cooking (though there are TV dinners!), knitting, gardening, anything at all that cannot be hurried, have a very particular value.”
—May Sarton, Journal Of A Solitude
(found here)
After I read this on the W.W. Norton blog, I went back to my May Sarton books which I have collected over the years. Some belonged to my mother who liked Sarton a lot and felt a certain bond with this lonely writer.
Image from the New York Public Library
Born in Belgium, May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) was an American poet, novelist and writer of memoirs. Although she is frequently pigeon-holed as a lesbian writer, she has a lot to say to everyone. Here’s a poem to think about today:
Now I Become Myself
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before– ”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
May Sarton, Collected Poems, 1930-1973
dual personalities 