Thanks, May

I just finished reading the last journal that May Sarton published entitled, "At Eighty Two".  I don't know when I started reading her journals but my favorite is "Journal of a Solitude".  She was also a poet and novelist and traveled the world.  Her great sorrow was not to be considered a a first rate poet, which I don't think she was.  This last journal you can skip, as well.  It chronicles a deep depression, her ill health and the difficulties of old age.  All those things are admirable to write about but I was left feeling sorrowful for her because she spends so much time on obligation...writing thank you notes for flowers and so little time creating.  My wish for my old age is just the opposite.

Regardless, she falls into the camp of those women who came before, who broke out of society's conventional roles and broke ground for all of us.  She loved women, poetry, and life....especially poetry.  Here is one of her favorites from Yeats, as quoted from her last book:

A Coat

I made myself a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat.
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they had brought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there is more enterprise
In walking naked.

Thanks for the poem and the reminder of how much we need our poets.