"Stand still. Stand still and stop the sun." May Sarton.


We were living in a small New England village of about 300 souls when I discovered May Sarton. We lived on the village green which was surrounded by white houses trimmed in black with a general store, school house, church and library that was open on Wednesday and Saturday.

I was a stay-at-home mom then with two kids under three. We chose not to own a television. Not by choice we had only one car and it went daily to work with DH. The nearest town of consequence was about 30 miles away. There was no public transportation. Ever. To anywhere. So I tended children. Built a garden. Refinished furniture. Painted walls. Braided rugs. Sewed little girl clothes. Taught Sunday school. Put in a bid for selectWoman (the first such in the history of the town!). Did volunteer work. And I read and read and read.



One day I asked the librarian to recommend an author and she said, "May Sarton". "If you're looking for something with no sex and no violence."


And I never stopped reading May Sarton. I became a groupie. I believe I own everything written by her and nearly everything written about her. A prolific writer, she produced novels, poetry and journals. Her New England fans consider her their own: she lived in Boston, Nelson NH and York ME. She died in the early 1990s in her 83rd year. I considered her "mine" and when she came to read her work in a nearby town, I was appalled to see that others shared my love and loyalty! And felt like a jealous lover.


You might ask: "What about her writing so captured the imagination? Like no else, May Sarton knew a woman's soul; she knew about duality of solitude and wrote of its joy and pain. In her journals she wrote of the struggle to be an independent woman, to live the live of an artist needing time alone to create and needing the fulfillment and solace of companionship and friendship. She was an actress, a director and producer in the thirties. As a young woman she had a passionate affair-of-the-heart with Virginia Wolf. She needed a Muse for the work. Always. She was essentially European, born in Belgium; she lived part of most every year in Europe. Her loyalty, her cultural sensibilities were European. After she settled in Nelson NH, she became an avid, passionate gardener.



Early on I fell in love with her short novels: The Poet and The Donkey; Joanna and the Donkey; Mrs. Stevens Hears The Mermaids Singing andthe journals and the longer novels. Hardly a winter goes by that I don't re-read favorite novels and poems. Here is one I love!

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!
The black shadow on the paperIs my hand;
the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
May Sarton