SOURCE: An interview in Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter, 1991, pp. 34-8.

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

May Sarton has written several novels, poems, and journal entries about aging. She has taken her readers into a world of physical breakdown, the letting go of activities, the acceptance, in peace, of the inevitable. She has written much about re-prioritizing. With her transparent style, she has shared both her joy and her anguish.

Now in her seventy-ninth year, Sarton feels she has been "catapulted into" old age. After a stroke five years ago, from which she entirely recovered, she has suffered a fibrillating heart and various internal problems. She has lost much of her immense physical energy.

Not so her psychic energy. For this interview, held over a weekend last September...