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I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography
by
May Sarton
Sarton's memoir begins with her roots in a Belgian childhood and describes her youth and education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, her coming-of-age years, and the people who influenced her life as a writer.
Paperback
,
240 pages
Published
January 17th 1996
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published February 1st 1988)
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Community Reviews
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Loved it. I wish she'd written a full autobiography but the journals of her later years are probably more revealing that a chronological account of her life would be. I'm on a May Sarton kick now. Just started "House By The Sea." My husband isn't going to be thrilled about it since I already bug him almost daily to let us move to the coast.
I enjoyed this better than her Journal of a Solitude, and her writing is so masterful that I keep highlighting things. As a memoir, it places you like a seagull over the action, rather than in the middle of it, and really there isn’t much action, more a beautiful description of several epochs in her parents’ and her life. It’s the kind of book that isn’t a page-turner, but one I like to read when I need good writing flowing through my head.
Somehow I don't think of May Sarton as a WW1 baby; she just seemed younger than that to me. In any case, this memoir of her early years reveals a magical young life during the depression. Other people are in bread lines, and somehow May is able to be an actor and write poetry. And summer in England and meet Virginia Woolf. If that isn't magical, I don't know what is.
I love May Sarton's books. This was good, but not nearly as good as The House By the Sea.
Straightforward autobiographical sketches of May's early childhood in Belgium and the U.S., in primary school, her foray into the theater, and her close friendships with the Huxleys and writers of the time. Delightful glimpses into May's growing understand of her destiny as a writer.
She is a beautiful writer. Her descriptive ability is stunning. I did not know of May Sarton before reading this; the title appealed to me. She was a happy find for me. I loved everything about this book.
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May Sarton was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton boldly came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her later memoir, Journal of a Solitude, was an account of h
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