May Sarton; Prolific Poet and Novelist

May Sarton, the prolific poet and novelist who cherished a solitary lifestyle but wrote openly about her lesbian love affairs, has died. She was 83.

Miss Sarton died Sunday of breast cancer in York Hospital in the town of York, Me., where she had lived for more than 20 years.

In her six-decade career, she wrote 53 books--17 volumes of poetry, 19 novels, 15 nonfiction works, including her famous self-revealing journals, and two children’s books. She also wrote a play and several screenplays.

“It’s been an extremely demanding life, but I like that. I don’t rest, in the sense of relaxing, ever,” she told The Times in 1987 during a book-signing trip to Southern California when she was celebrating her 75th birthday.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley designated April 10, 1987, as May Sarton Day. She also received a lifetime achievement award from the Woman’s Building and the West Hollywood Connexxus Women’s Center.

Miss Sarton’s first book was a collection of poems, “Encounter in April,” published in 1937, and she continued to consider herself a poet, noting late in her life: “If you’re a poet, you’re a poet first.”

A book of her career-long efforts, “Collected Poems: 1930-1993,” has been issued by W.W. Norton, her publisher for the last three decades.

In 1965, Miss Sarton published her groundbreaking novel, “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing,” acknowledging her lesbianism. Now a classic, the novel became her favorite, although she said its revelation cost her two jobs.

Miss Sarton was born Eleanore Marie Sarton on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, and two years later during World War I fled the German advance with her parents. After two years in England, they settled in Cambridge, Mass., in 1916.

She began writing poetry as a child but was also interested in theater. On graduation from high school at 17, she became an apprentice actress with Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre in New York. Later, she directed plays and ran her own Associated Actors Theatre for several years.

Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction all employed themes of love and the importance of individuality. Among her best-known novels are “The Small Room,” “The Magnificent Spinster” and “A Shower of Summer Days.”

Although many of her novels had autobiographical themes, it was Miss Sarton’s journals that depicted her day-to-day life in the clapboard house by the sea with her pets and her garden--”Journal of a Solitude,” “At Seventy,” “After the Stroke,” “Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year” and “Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year.”

A final work, “At Eighty-Two,” is scheduled for publication in December.

Contributions to the Sarton Scholarship Fund can be sent to Timothy Matlock Warren, 53 Hubbard St., Concord, Mass. 01742.