SOURCE: Casey, Beth. “May Sarton and the Muse: Lovers, Water, and Leaves.” In A House of Gathering: Poets on May Sarton's Poetry, edited and with an introduction by Marilyn Kallet, pp. 211-28. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.

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

The mysterious muse, the source of poetic vision, has been the central focus of May Sarton's poetry and poetics for over sixty years. For Sarton, the muse opens the poetic dialogue with the self, confirming and releasing that poetic identity necessary to the creative act and to participation in the experience we have called the sublime. In two of her fables, Joanna and Ulysses and The Poet and the Donkey, she depicts the essential relationship of the muse to nature and to human care and compassion; and in her novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, she explores the psychological origins of...