Artistic Journey

I finally started one of my books for the Outmoded Authors challenge, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, and I have a feeling I will like this one a lot. The artistic process fascinates me. Here’s a quote which I really liked:

“I have often imagined that if I were in solitary confinement for an indefinite time and knew that no one would ever read what I wrote, I would still write poetry, but I would not write novels. Why? Perhaps because the poem is primarily a dialogue with the self and the novel a dialogue with others. They come from entirely different modes of being. I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something.”

Of course one thing often leads to another and I ended up seeking out some poems by May Sarton. Here is one that I like for it makes me think of a true wintery day.

The evenings are spun glass these winter days;
They stretch out clear above the dusty litter,
They quietly surround with a pale crystal haze, —
But just before the dark these evenings glitter.
Then for one moment under that clear glass
The fragile earth, the trees, all seem to shiver,
While hangs there, still, most beautiful and ominous,
The darkening sky reflected in the river,
While people peer out just before they pull
The comfortable shades and shut themselves away
From all that’s ominous and beautiful,
From what they guess the night might have to say.

~ Winter Evening