A CELEBRATION FOR MAY SARTON: Essays, edited by Constance Hunting, Puckerbrush Press, 290 pages, $24.95.

In June 1992, Westbrook College hosted a national conference titled, “May Sarton at 80,” which celebrated this noted Maine author’s place and importance in 20th-century American literature. Numerous presentations were made by Sarton scholars, while May herself provided the emotional highlight of the symposium as she read her poems to the audience.

In an introduction to this volume written by Mary Anne Wallace, special collections librarian at the Abplanalp Library of Westbrook College, it was noted that “The reading and presentations combined to create an uncommon intellectually and emotionally satisfying conference. There was, however, a complaint voiced by many attendees. Namely, dismay at the necessary but regretful choices they had to make about which papers they heard.”

This volume was published in response to that regret. It includes 22 essays written by scholars from Maine to California, covering both Sarton’s life and her work. Several examine recurring themes within that work, such as aging, death and grief. Others give a glimpse of the fascinating life she’d led, having formed solid relationships with literary figures such as H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Virginia Woolf.

In “May Sarton, Editor of Vision,” Constance Hunting, associate

professor of English at the University of Maine, and publisher and editor of Puckerbrush Press in Orono, discussed Sarton’s editing process, a process which Sarton has said, “is creation and … a far more exciting and revelatory process than the mere manipulating of word and idea. …” Hunting used the author’s drafts of the poem “Halfway to Silence” to illustrate “the poet’s progress from intuition to finished poem.”

In “The May Sarton I Have Known,” feminist writer Carolyn Heilbrun writes of the literary network which for years ignored Sarton’s work: “Even when she had an influential friend, the friend (I think, for example, of Louise Bogan, poetry reviewer for The New Yorker), was unable to commit herself professionally to May: what would the men think? May and I used to joke that after she had published 17 or some such number of books, the only good reviews she had in The New York Times Book Review was for a children’s book about a parrot.”

To attempt to point out the many interesting facets of Sarton’s life and work covered in this collection is as frustrating to this reviewer as the process of selecting which speaker to hear at the conference must have been to those attending. This book provides the opportunity to hear missed speakers. For the many who did not attend but have read and loved Sarton’s work, it gives a fascinating look at the life and writings of this great Maine author.

For a chance to hear Sarton discuss her life, aging, and her work, and read her poem “The Phoenix Again,” pick up a copy of Audio Bookshelf’s new audio-tape titled, “May Sarton: Excerpts From a Life — Journals & Memoirs” (four cassettes, $29.95). Andrea Itkin reads from selected works including “Endgame,” “Encore,” and “After the Stroke,” among others.