In Time Like Air: Poems

By May Sarton

Finalist for the National Book Award: May Sarton at her evocative and contemplative best
The title poem of this entrancing collection compares love to salt for its ability both to dissolve and to crystallize “into a presence.” At once philosophical and fiercely corporeal, this work presents emotion as a sensory experience. Written with Sarton’s characteristic concision, these deeply felt poems will delight readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Mar 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480474338

May Sarton

May Sarton (1912–1995) was born on May 3 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. Her novels A Shower of Summer Days, The Birth of a Grandfather, and Faithful Are the Wounds, as well as her poetry collection In Time Like Air, all received nominations for the National Book Award. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her last memoir, Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.

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Reviews for In Time Like Air

[tapestry100 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE MIRRORThere is anxiety hot in the throat,The dark wood where even lovers get lost,The axe held loosely, dangerous in the hand,That might slip, those cloudy dreams of threat. There is always ahead some next, more awful test,Or again the bog, indifference, dragging quicksand;There is the never-ending battle withThe unforgiven, unforgiving self for truth. It may all prove untenable for lack of hope,Something we cannot deal with or escape—These are the things we lie awake to ponder. There is in each of us a healing mother;There is the hand cradling the axe, breakingDead wood down, held lightly with clean grace;There is the help we can give each other,And every morning, light at our first wakingAs if each day a blessing did take place. Despite all fumbles, bungling, we endure,Manage to go on building the hard inner core,A free self that might harbor faithful love. There is more in us than we have learned to give. These are the things we lay awake to ponder. My favorite poem from the collection.