In the following essay, Sibley identifies the theme of communion as central to Sarton's later novels.

In the following essay, Sibley presents an overview of Sarton's poetry.

In the following essay, Evans surveys the defining themes of Sarton's poetry and discusses her perception of the role of the poet.

In the following essay, DeShazer analyzes Sarton's complex treatment of “crucial relationship between the woman poet and her muse” as evidenced in the poems of A Durable Fire.

In the following essay, Woodward traces Sarton's approach to aging in her novels and journals, contending that her “portrayal of old age is a welcome departure from the Western literary tradition of gerontophobia.”

In the following essay, Code explores issues of responsibility, morality, and dependency in Sarton's As We Are Now.

In the following essay, Braham underscores the unorthodox and personal nature of the memoirs of Sarton, Nancy Mairs, and Audre Lorde.

In the following essay, Stout explores the importance of silent communication in Sarton's novels.

In the following essay, based on an interview, Sarton discusses autobiographical aspects of her work, the relationship between art and life, and the role of the female artist in contemporary society.

In the following essay, Drake examines the connection between Sarton's spirituality and her lyricism.

In the following essay, Casey discusses Sarton's humanistic poetics.

In the following essay, Taylor asserts that the poetry of Sarton's Collected Poems is organized to illustrate not only her poetic development, but her maturation as a person.

In the following essay, Taylor presents a retrospective of Sarton's career as a poet up to the publication of her Collected Poems.

In the following essay, Mandel explores major themes and poetic forms in Sarton's early poetry and discusses them as part of the “signature” of her work.

In the following essay, Miner explores the portrayal of spinster women in Sarton's novels, asserting that her characters often are “old women who have used their lives productively, indeed exuberantly.”

In the following essay, Wyatt-Brown investigates different theories of aging and productivity and applies them to Sarton's treatment of the elderly in her work.

[Miner is an American novelist, short story writer, editor, critic, and educator. In the essay below, she examines the ways in which Sarton represents lesbians and single women in her writings, noting in particular the relationship between her fiction and nonfiction.]

In the following essay, Heilbrun views Sarton as an outsider and speculates how this position has affected her work.

[In the interview below, originally conducted in September 1990, Sarton discusses various aspects of her career, life, and writing process.]

In the following essay, White scrutinizes Sarton's struggle with depression as expressed through her journals.

In the following essay, Bakerman emphasizes the themes of self and personal relationships in Sarton's work, perceiving them as the unifying forces of her oeuvre.

In the following essay, Eder explores autobiographical aspects of Sarton's Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, and calls the novel “a novel of dualities resolved into unity.”

In the following essay, Springer praises Sarton's dignified and sensitive treatment of the elderly in her work.

In the following essay, Klein considers the role of death and dying in Sarton's novels.

In the following essay, Hunting argues against critics who consider Sarton's works to be simplistic and overly genteel.

In the following essay, Pobo discusses the regenerative properties of lightness and silence in Sarton's poetry.

In the following essay, LeBar contrasts Sarton's portrayal of marriage in Crucial Conversations to that in Pearl Buck's The Good Earth.

In the following essay, Anderson maintains that Sarton is an invaluable model for young women writers.

In the following essay, Eddy observes elements of classical, Judeo-Christian, and Far Eastern mythical patterns in Sarton's poetry and argues that this use of myth is Sarton's attempt to create order in a chaotic universe.

In the following review, Miner praises The Magnificent Spinster as “provocative in itself and as a mirror of past work, reflecting such classic Sarton issues as social conscience, aging, women's autonomy, friendship and the nature of art.”

In the following essay, Otis compares the language in“Because What I Want Most Is Permanence” to a river flowing ever deeper, “offering tranquility and continuity.”

[In the obituary below, Gussow surveys Sarton's life and career.]

[Schwartzkopff is an American editor. In the review below, she provides a favorable assessment of Encore.]

[Halpern is an American novelist. In the review below, she discusses thematic and stylistic aspects of Sarton's journal Endgame.]

In the following review, Ringold lauds the vitality and clarity of the poems in Letters from Maine as well as the entries in her journal At Seventy.

[In the following review, Lockett offers praise for Sarton's Collected Poems (1930–1993).]

[Despite] the value she assigns to imagery in theory, Sarton's poems remain curiously disembodied…. [She] resorts to circumlocution, strained metaphor, abstract nouns, and constricting stanza forms. She sets up a wall between herself and her materials. (p. 273) I think it is insufficient to dismiss her poetry, as have many reviewers, with the label "old-fashioned." "Old-fashioned" implies that Sarton is writing poetry perfectly adequate in itself but harking back to...

In the following review, Lockett delineates the defining characteristics of Sarton's verse in her Collected Poems (1930-1993).

With the publication of As We Are Now (1973), May Sarton added another perspective to her continuing examination of two central and important themes. She treats in her novels two basic motifs from a variety of points of view, one of which is the driving need of each individual to "create" himself, to come to a deep and positive kind of self-understanding which will both liberate and discipline him so that he can live in the deepest and highest reaches. In the process of achieving that understa...

In the following review, Earnshaw lauds the thematic richness and stylistic mastery of the poems in Halfway to Silence.

In the following review of The Lion and the Rose, Bacon comments favorably on Sarton's execution and expression.

May Sarton is very good, has always been very good, in suggesting personal bonds which hover on the edge of what we used to call "irregularity." Subtly placed and sketched in, they are often unknown to the persons themselves but for us they serve to deepen the understanding Sarton permits us of her characters' motivation…. Although I persist in my feeling that "As We Are Now" (1973) is still May Sarton's best fiction, I find "Crucial Conversations�...

In the following review, Prothro offers a positive assessment of A Reckoning.

Entering into May Sarton's mind, through her [The House by the Sea: A Journal], is an agreeable and instructive experience. The small but telling events of her daily existence teach the reader, by example, how to reflect more keenly on one's own experiences. Sarton's selected moments include a daily walk with her dog and cat through the woods, her feelings about aging, the visits of a close friend now almost senile, her efforts in her garden (she wishes visitors would observe it more at...

Miss Sarton handles [the theme of A Reckoning] gracefully, absorbing the reader in [the turmoil of Laura, the protagonist] without depressing him. She touches on the indignities of dying, the cruelty of hospitals, the spirit trapped inside the body's broken shell, the fact that only the living can be healed by love—the dying must separate themselves from love. In A Reckoning, Laura is forced into these realizations; Miss Sarton already has come to terms with death's immediacy, as she re...

[In Selected Poems of May Sarton], the poems shift between established forms and free verse, the best being the least technically tight. When subject and technique converge, one discovers a work that is classic and contemporary, a "passion of the word."… Sarton has mastered the quality of timeless poetry, to observe and reflect at the same instant. She can look at herself objectively in "Gestalt at Sixty," examine her motives for seeking solitude, and accept age and death....

May Sarton's poems [in Collected Poems: 1930–1973] enter and illuminate every natural corner of our lives. In twelve books of poems and fourteen novels, Ms. Sarton has, for more than forty years, made patient, enduring testament. The poems are not easy, nor were they meant to be, for the consciousness behind them seldom rests easy. She wanted "good violence to find organic form", and it almost always does…. May Sarton's poems are so strong in their faith and in thei...

Miss Sarton is usually best in her portraits of women, and Poppy [the protagonist in Crucial Conversations], with her feelings of outrage and despair, is altogether believable. The interfering bachelor, Pip, has a feminine streak in him. The best scenes are when he is drawing out the twins, who applaud the divorce, or defending Poppy from the conventional criticism of her mother and mother-in-law. The desire of a woman who has been suffocated in her marriage to be true to herself in the last third of her li...