Conversations with May Sarton

With increasing candor and openness May Sarton’s conversations have given an intimate view of her honest courageous inner life. Best known to her many readers as a novelist and keeper of journals Sarton sees herself pre-eminently as a poet. In the interviews collected here she speaks forthrightly about herself her independence and her writing.<P>Although born in Belgium Sarton is quintessentially American in her choice of solitude on which her personal well-being and writing depend. She is a modernist who has defined herself as an artist with the occasionally painful recognition that all else must finally be subordinated to her writing. Her journal <i>After the Stroke</i> makes clear that when she cannot write she stands on the edge of the abyss of nonbeing.<P>These interviews offer Sarton’s readers the model of a woman who has supported herself as a writer of achievement who has made her way without the comforts of academic tenure grants or bestseller listings.