May Sarton
May Sarton
May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton, an American poet, novelist and memoirist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth3 May 1912
CountryUnited States of America
May Sarton quotes about
people naked would-be
The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to poets. ... Power requires that the inner person never be unmasked. No, we poets have to go naked. And since this is so, it is better that we stay private people; a naked public person would be rather ridiculous, what?
poet clear
It is clear that we do not exactly choose our poems; our poems choose us.
passion poet my-passion
Words are my passion / And out of them and me / I would create beauty.
writing artist civilization
It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work.
forever done goes-on
One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.
balance action compromise
In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.
pigeons flight destination
Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.
teaching way needs
Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know ... if one is honest.
trying tables clear
Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing there outside you.
novel felt written
I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something.
spring joy poetry-is
one of the springs of poetry is joy ...
energy literature formal
each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.
speech equilibrium
Poetry finds its perilous equilibrium somewhere between music and speech ...
feelings balance shifting
Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal - and these balances are shifting all the time.