Reviews for Clinical anatomy

The average rating for Clinical anatomy based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-09-26 00:00:00 Michael Thomas (3.5) This journal covers January to November 1979. Sarton was recovering physically from surgery for breast cancer and emotionally from the end of a 30-year relationship with Judy Matlack, a former lover who was in a nursing home, declining gradually from Alzheimer’s. I’ve been reading Sarton’s journals at random, rather than in chronological order. Journal of a Solitude is still my favorite, and I slightly prefer At Eighty-Two to this one. As always, though, there are wise words about the sanctity of everyday life (“the immense joys of having time to think, to be quiet, to live along in a sedate routine, that routine that for me releases the imagination”) and the absolute importance of time alone for a creator. “Every artist lives in a constant state of self-criticism, self-doubt, and in near despair a good deal of the time,” Sarton writes. She was her own worst critic. Poetry was always foremost for her, followed by fiction, followed at some distance by memoir. Indeed, she questions the autobiographical pursuit, even as she engages with it: “I find the journal suspect because it is almost too easy. It is a low form of creation.” Yet I think the journals are fantastic. They are such cozy reading for me; I’ll have to ration myself so I don’t run out of them too soon. (With thanks once again to Open Road Media for making e-books of many of Sarton’s works available through NetGalley.)

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-25 00:00:00 Erich Arndt A journal (diary) writer cannot help but compare one's own to the superior eloquence of May Sarton's. Although she planned to publish her journal, her entries are brutally honest. Whatever she might have censored for the public, so much more is revealed. The year (December '78 through November 1979) progressed from utter despair and rages to a much more accepting understanding of her life and its painful changes. (It came to me near the end that she must have been bipolar.) Dated December 29, 1978 she writes: "The light these December mornings has a rather special quality; austere, cold as it is, it has amplitude, a spacious austerity. I live with a wide semi-circle of horizon over and beyond the bare field. Snow would make it richer, but in my mood at present, I rest on the cold gray sea. And wait for the sun's rays to catch a tiny prism Karen Saum hung in my bedroom window, wait for that sudden flame, first crimson then sometimes a flash of blue, startlingly alive." Despite poetic phrases and deep probing of thoughts and feelings, Sarton's story is raw and rough, hard to bear at times. But of course I highly recommend it. (NB: Title's years should be 78-79, not 1979 - 1980.)