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Now I Become Myself: Now I become myself. It's taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people's faces, Run madly, as if Time were there, Terribly old, crying a warning, "Hurry, you will be dead before--" (What? Before you reach the morning? Or the end of the poem is clear? Or love safe in the walled city?) Now to stand still, to be here, Feel my own weight and density! The black shadow on the paper Is my hand; the shadow of a word As thought shapes the shaper Falls heavy on the page, is heard. All fuses now, falls into place From wish to action, word to silence, My work, my love, my time, my face Gathered into one intense Gesture of growing like a plant. As slowly as the ripening fruit Fertile, detached, and always spent, Falls but does not exhaust the root, So all the poem is, can give, Grows in me to become the song, Made so and rooted by love. Now there is time and Time is young. O, in this single hour I live All of myself and do not move. I, the pursued, who madly ran, Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
May Sarton
Bio: -May Sarton was born on May 3, 1912 in Wondelgem, Germany. She left Germany in the 1914 invasion and eventually moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. She also died on July 16, 1995. -She used her ablitiy to "sacramentalize the ordinary" by using every day objects such as flowers, gardens, animals, changing sunlight and personal relationships in order to find deeper, universal truths. -May used themes as the need for solitude, the role of the muse in the act of poetic activity, and the role of the female artist in society. -May's parents "believed that, though Jesus was not God, he was a mighty leader, and the spirit of Jesus, the logos of him, is worship of God and the spirit of man." -May Sarton worte in "Journal of a Solitude" that "one must believe that privatee dilemmas are, if deeply examined, universal, and so, if expressed, have a human value beyond the private. . . I am willing to give myself away and take the consequences, whatever they are." -"There are never more than a few in any generation who can share the world of the spirit with us, to make us know that we are greater in thought or feeling than we believed we were, but May Sarton is one, and we are grateful." -William Drake in "Forward into the Past"
*~Poetic Tools:~* -Imperfect Rhyme -Perfect/Exact Rhyme -Simile -Hyperbole -Personification -Repetition The meaning behind this poemis that throughout May's life she became who others wanted her to be. Through her writing she developed a sense of who she and who she wants to become. The discovery took many years "slowly as the ripening fruit." At the very end of the poem May just wants to stop time to enjoy the moments that she has to just be herself because time is short and every moment is precious.
