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. 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 After the Stroke makes clear that when she cannot write she stands on the edge of the abyss of nonbeing.
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.