The Land of Silence: And Other Poems

By May Sarton

A splendid collection from a true master

It is often in solitude that a writer begins to understand herself. This becomes evident in The Land of Silence, May Sarton’s collection of poems previously published in the New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine, as Sarton searches for solitude and tries to understand the regrets and ecstasies associated with it.
 
Images from these poems linger in the mind’s eye: a bird, a dream. Sarton’s verse feels real, yet it represents something more. Published in 1953, the year after Sarton won the Reynolds Lyric Award of the Poetry Society of America, The Land of Silence presents a poet at peak form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Dec 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497689558

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 The Land of Silence

[tapestry100 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many of the poems here begin to speak of Sarton's search for solitude and how she is becoming familiar and even accepting of the need and benefits of a solitary life. One of my favorite lines from her poetry came from this book, as well. "I send you love forward into the past." came from her poem, Letter from Chicago, which was written for Virginia Woolf, as she was thinking back on Woolf's life and the personal pain that Sarton felt for her loss. I can't help but think of this line whenever I think of those close to me who have left my life.