A splendid collection from a true master It is often in solitude that a writer begins to understand herself. This becomes evident in The Land of Silence , May Sarton's collection of poems previously published in the New Yorker and Harper's Magazine , as Sarton searches for solitude and tries to understand the regrets and ecstasies associated with it. Images from these poems linger in the mind's eye: a bird, a dream. Sarton's verse feels real, yet it represents something more. Published in 1953, the year after Sarton won the Reynolds Lyric Award of the Poetry Society of America, The Land of Silence presents a poet at peak form.