Remember being young and finding an author you just HAD to read everything by. Whether it was Judy Blume or, in my case in junior high, Thomas Hardy, John Steinbeck, and Ray Bradbury (shut up, I love my dead white men - or at least some of my literary dead white men - and maybe that was all I could find at the library but it served me well).
Right now, however, I am all about May Sarton. And the best news is that she wrote ANOTHER book about a donkey called The Poet and the Donkey. So I read that this week and it was a super moving story about an old poet who had lost his muse and decided what he needed to find it again was to borrow the neighbours donkey for the summer. It turns out to be a good deal for both he and the donkey and honestly, there are scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny while still being moving.
Sarton herself is a poet and that is evident on every page.
The old men in the other room have given up of have become totally passive. They are covered over by time like weeds in water, swaying as the currents move, agitated by a change in the atmosphere, but so remore that it is as if they had ceased to live except deep down inside themselves.
~ From As We Are Now
The other book I read this week was As We Are Now which is a heartbreaking book about an old woman, Caro Spencer, who is put into a home (I mean, I guess it is a nursing home but the people aren’t nurses and their isn’t a lot of rules they follow) and writes about how awful her experience is while planning her escape. Yes, she is probably losing her mind a little (she had a heart attack and can’t live on her own anymore) but not as much as the woman who runs the home is making her think she is losing her mind. The story is juxtaposed between awful moments in the home and moments of real beauty - like the visit of a minister and then his teenage daughter who actually see Caro Spence for the person she is, not this shell left to slowly waste away and not be a burden to anyone. Caro had a full long life before being moved to that home and the fact that it is just discounted is heartbreaking. The whole book is heartbreaking but so so good. I mentioned it on Instagram the other day and my friend Lauren said it was required reading in nursing skill and I think that is just brilliant. I think Sarton, if she ever knew that this book would become required reading for nurses, would be pleased.
Sarton herself wrote well into her 80s, even after having a stroke, and is probably one of the best voices out there on aging and the aged. In total she wrote “53 books, including 19 novels, 17 books of poetry, 15 nonfiction works, 2 children's books, a play, and additional screenplays” (from Wikipedia). I’m exhuasted just looking at that list (and feeling an impending sense of what am I doing with my life? Mind you she had no children.) I’m very much looking forward to delving into her earlier works and her journals once I can get my hands on them (which is really rather hard!)
In other news I was recently interviewed on the Sorry, I’m Sad Podcast. If you would like to have a listen click on the link here. I mostly talk about living with terminal cancer but we also talk about living with grief every day and how you get through it. Kelsie Snow is a great interviewer - she herself dealing with the daily grief of having a husband with ALS and I think it is important to talk about grief and bring it out into the open instead of pretending it isn’t there. So if you have the chance give it a listen.
I’m going to order As We Are Now. I am so pleased for the introduction to May Sarton’s work. Xx
This song was written by Rachael Bloom. Not kid-safe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM
Alexis