Since Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton's musings on books, poetry, friendship and the pleasures of everyday life have grown richer with each new installment. In this, her last journal, Sarton continues to adjust to the feeling that she is a stranger in the land of old age. And though her struggles and daily setbacks continue, there is an optimistic, musing tone as she contemplates this unique time in a person's life. May Sarton died in July 1995, not long after completing this volume.


From Publishers Weekly
Poet, novelist, survivor and writer of journals, Sarton is back with a chronicle of 1993-1994, the year she turned 82. Newcomers to this series will be hypnotized by the progression of days as Sarton struggles to cope with life in a large Maine house. The winter is unusually harsh, the roof leaks, the garage door jams, the stairs are tiring. And if all that were not enough, she has a minor stroke. Lightening these burdens for a frail, ill woman are the friends, the frequently delivered flowers, the mail and not least Pierrot, the crotchety but so comforting cat. Sarton feels with keen despair the lack of recognition for her poetry by the literary establishment?a major anthology of 20th-century female poets published this year failed to include her?but she takes solace in affectionate letters from her readers all over the world. This journal takes us from the highs to the lows of old age: a visit from Susan Sherman, close friend and editor, is a joy; a session with biographer Margot Peters gives Sarton the chilling feeling that she is losing control of her own life. Finally, the discursive narrative comes together as a poignantly intimate portrait of a literary life. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Sarton's final work?she died earlier this year?seems at times an endless complaint. Despite the lavish care and attention offered by her friends and readers, nothing could compensate her for her ill health and lack of critical acclaim by the literary establishment ("being nowhere as a poet"). Depression was an almost constant state for Sarton during her 1993-94 journal-recording year. She writes that she has tried her entire life to go into the inner chamber of her soul, where she is happy. Unlike A Journal of a Solitude (LJ 4/1/73), in which her perception of life is charged with understanding and insight, in this journal the inner soul is illusive. The daily deluge of devotional letters, the routine gifts of chocolate and flowers, the translation of her writings into Japanese do not boost her spirit. Sarton knew that life is full of poetry. However, she also knew "there is a pane of glass between me and almost everything," excepting her cat, Pierrot. Sarton asks, "Where is myself? God knows." There must have been some satisfaction in knowing that. For literature collections.?Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Sarton's journals have for years fascinated the curious and inspired the creative. Celebrating the solitude needed to write and the interconnectedness of caring people in a lonely profession, they have also reassured others living the writer's life. Here, Sarton breaks her rule of adding nothing to a day's notation. She enlarges the entries with afterthoughts "to make a kind of dialogue out of what had been a soliloquy." The primary resultant duet is Sarton's with herself as she reflects on past successes, current work, aging friends falling prey to infirmity and death, visitors, mail, the joys or the reservations she has about books read--in short, the daily details of her eighth decade, when the swift freedom of her mind is weighted by the limitations of physical frailty. And what a mind it is! Whether sadly pondering that her own parents lived only into their seventies and never experienced true old age, or considering the delights of Pierrot, the cat who shares her afternoon naps, Sarton brings family and friends into sharp focus with quick, concentrated strokes. Whitney Scott


Philadelphia City Paper
Reporting from the front lines on the author's daily battle with a body and a mind that increasingly refuse to cooperate, At Eighty-Two captures this struggle with a simplicity, elegance and strength that is characteristic of its author and her lifetime of work.


Book Description
May Sarton's eagerly awaited journals have recorded her life as a single, woman writer and, in later years, as a woman confronting old age. She completed this pilgrimage through her eighty-second year a few months before she died in 1995.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For the many thousands of fans who have been nourished by May Sarton's words over the years, this last journal by the beloved Maine poet/writer will be very special. May Sarton died on July 16, 1995, just a few months after she finished this pilgrimage through her 82nd year. Over the two decades since she published Journal of a Solitude, Sarton's journals have been eagerly awaited, markers of daily events, feelings, and responses to the world around her house-by-the-sea. In this last journal, Sarton continues to adjust to the feeling that she is a stranger in the land of old age. And though her struggles and daily setbacks continue, there is an optimistic, musing tone as she contemplates this unique time in a person's life.

FROM THE CRITICS

Beth Wolfensberger

May Sarton, the poet who charted her late-middle and old age in a series of published journals, died in July, leaving behind the last of them, At Eighty-Two. Sarton worried about this book: "It is a description of severe depression," she writes in one entry, "and I have been wondering even if it should be published."

Such doubts won't be shared, however, by the many readers already addicted to her daily musings. As in her earlier journals, Sarton recounts mostly mundane occurrences -- conversations with her many friends, books she reads. She shares poems and snippets of fan mail; she admires her cat. Her low days stem not from a prescient suspicion that she is living her last full year, but from tallying up regrets. Regret one: that she is "nowhere as a poet" and "a failure" because her fans are "ordinary people," not reviewers. Regret two, ironically (as she occasionally realizes): that she's uncomfortably busy getting published and being revered.

Beset by the frailties of age, she rarely steps out to her beloved garden. Still, she's showered with flowers and notes from devotees, and she so delights in life's small pleasures that -- despite weeping over bum reviews and endangered species -- she rarely seems truly depressed. "Yesterday was a dismal, absolutely dismal day," begins a typical sentence, "except for the fact that a bunch of flowers and a beautiful pink cyclamen came for me." Alternately cranky, whiny, nostalgic, appreciative, thrilled, Sarton is both childish and appealingly childlike. Which may be why, although this isn't the strongest of her journals, we miss her when the final page is turned. -- Salon

Publishers Weekly

PW called this last of poet Sarton's published journals "a poignantly intimate portrait of a literary life." (May)

Library Journal