In the letter below, a teenage May Sarton tells her high school friends of a recent meeting with Florence Evans, director of the Little Theater at the Gloucester School in Massachusetts. Sarton shared a few of her poems with Evans, who responded favorably. Even here Sarton’s reluctance to go to college is apparent. Although she would win a scholarship to Vassar, she aspired to the theater,and after seeing Eva Le Gallienne in The Cradle Song, her hopes were pinned on Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theater in New York.
To Abby and Mary Dewing
March 1928
Dear Abby and Mary,
I am writing this in spare moments at rehearsal. We are working on “Madame” every single minute today and the first performance is tonight. The dress rehearsal, as usual, was hilariously bad. I’m quite worried about it, even the business was perfectly insane and most of the time they used their books. Wish me luck!
Well, here goes for Mrs. Evans. It’ll take pages I assure you. First I read her the Miss Cunningham one; she said that she had always thought of her in much the same way, as a sort of sprite dancing on waves. She read it aloud in a very bad way as if it was the first time she had seen it. She thought “almost-to-careless-smiles” was good and also “the flash of crystal appreciation.” She said she thought I had much the same idea only I had developed it and perfected it. She said that analogies were essential to convey thought. Then that I am all-apparalled [sic] for a poet or function as a poet. She gave me this as the functions of a poet:
1. tints commonplace
2. finds life pulsating beneath style
3. is the most broadminded of people
4. is essentially an economist
She said my voice showed that I had economized and used every experience and therefore was much more mature than Peggy Leland. (I’m tired of saying “she said” so when she says anything I won’t put anything and when I say anything I’ll put “I think” and “I said”). Deterioration would be infinite without poets. Joyce Kilner called poets “glorified reporters.” Writing is such an excellent detective of your development.
I showed her “A Sense of Proportion.” She was delighted. She loved “tread on the very hem of truth.” She asked me if I had always written and I explained…that its [writing’s] purpose was not to teach information but to teach how to get information for yourself. She was very interested. When I said I thought it sometimes lacked discipline she said that the subject was the only discipline necessary. The objective of education, she said:
1. vitality
2. courage
3. sensitivity
4. intelligence
She asked if I were going to college. She said immediately that she thought I ought. But I explained all my reasons that I have told you often and said that I would follow a more or less regular course of study alone. She thought a minute then “I can’t say right off for you…because of your background and character. But don’t decided until you have to. Keep your mind open. It will cut out out of precious things not to have a degree.” She was much surprised that I was to act instead of write. I guess she thinks I can’t do it. She said I might find that I only wanted to act as a way of getting experience for writing. I was rather amused…
Once she asked if I knew E. St. V. Millay. There we absolutely agree. I offered to lend her Millay’s article “Fear” which she had not seen. She was pleased that I read the newspapers enough to have seen that…She wants me to read Tennyson’s “Rispah” [sic] as an example of the difference between modern and classical poetry. She said that poets today do not write with the purpose of educating or reforming but for the purpose of interpreting life. This she thought the true way of making beauty.
I then read “The Tower.” She said it had a mysticism that reminded her of Maeterlinck…I said I meant by the tower falling that once beauty was unessential it had to crumble…
I miss you both terribly—the room seems so huge and empty and still.
Best love to your mother and piles to you—
May
Note: Miss Cunningham was co-director of the Little Theater, one whom Sarton described as “so tiny and slight, between a flower and a star.”
From The Letters of May Sarton, 1916-1954. New York: W.W. Norton (1997), p. 35-36.
FURTHER READING
An interview with Sarton in which she puts forward a more mature theory of poetry.
Tennyson’s use of the high Gothic in “Rizpah.”
Millay’s essay, “Fear.”
Maeterlink at the premiere of one of his most famous plays, The Blue Bird.