In this book, we are closer to the marrow than ever before in May Sarton's writing.

Pure lyric poems come rarely in any poet's life.

"May Sarton has become one of America's best-loved writers. . . The publication of the first collection of primarily new verse in a decade will bring joy to her admirers. . . The more recent work is exquisitely tender, full of reverence for the most fleeting of beauties".

Here are Sarton's observations and reflections, many of which came to her as if by magic during the small hours of the morning. Along with the daily events of writing a letter, appreciating her flowers, taking care of her car Pierrot, these poems wrestle with the larger questions of life and death, the difficulties and rewards of living alone.

The book celebrates that time, marks its passing, and opens up the poetic vision it left behind. The poems speak of the permanence of the memory of love and of the flowering it brings. They also draw on the rich, sometimes harsh, beauty of nature and its solace.

Compilation of intense, spirited verse which explores the realms of religion, politics, nature, violence, and old age.

Joanna's holiday on the little Greek island of Santorini was meant to be a solitary one in which she would recover from the bitterness of the Greek war and her mothers's death--until she adopted Ulysses, the mistreated little donkey.

In these poems, May Sarton reflects on a journey undertaken to celebrate her fiftieth birthday, a journey that took her around the world to Greece via Japan and India, and finally home to the New Hampshire village where she had put down roots.

"A small, sophisticated, elegantly sentimental journey through a New Hampshire village summer. Our companions are an aging poet, who is sad because he can no longer write he has lost the joy he used to have in simply being alive and a young, mischievous female donkey, who is sad because she can't run and play she has a touch of arthritis. . . . There is a moral, of course, but any moral looks dull next to the simple happiness of the old poet and his long-eared muse." The New Yorker"

Reed and Poppy Whitelaw's conventional and apparently serene life together is shattered when Poppy tells Reed that she has decided to leave him. In a series of encounters that follow the shock of this news, which affects not only Reed but also their children and friends--in particular Philip, who must learn why he is so invested in their marriage--Reed and Poppy struggle to make sense of their lives in this alien new terrain.