Elizabeth Sargent

1920 - 2017

Elizabeth Sargent NEW YORK CITY - Elizabeth Sargent (E.N. Sargent), Poet and last artist tenant to live above Carnegie Hall, passed away peacefully in her sleep on April 10th. She was 96. Among Ms. Sargent’s published works were The African Boy (1963, Macmillan & 1986, A.A.L.), Love Poems of Elizabeth Sargent (1966, Signet & 1972, Herder and Herder), The Magic Book of Love Exercises (1970, Bantam), and A Woman in Love (1977, Avon). Her poems appeared in The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s, Esquire, and The Atlantic Monthly, among several others. She was twice a resident artist at Yaddo and she read her works at both The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and The Poetry Centre at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. In 1966 she was the State of New Jersey’s Poet of the Year. Born Betty Bernadine Robinson on May 16th,1920 in West Virginia or Pennsylvania coal country, she was adopted by a Quaker family and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio. After attending Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Ms. Sargent lived in New York, California, Texas and New Jersey, before settling into Studio 901 above Carnegie Hall in 1964. She resided there until 2010, when the Carnegie Hall Corporation removed it’s tenants and demolished it’s historic studios. She was predeceased by her husband Alan Gregory Roberts in 1976 and her son Jared Alan Roberts in 1992. She is survived by a daughter, Serena Sorensen. For many decades, Elizabeth summered in Saratoga Springs, renting room 39 at the Grand Union Motel, where she wrote poetry, rested, and felt rejuvenated by the springs. Friends are invited to attend a graveside service at Greenridge Cemetery on Saturday, April 29th at 1:30pm. A procession will begin from the cemetery office at 1:25pm. Contact billylyons1@gmail.com with questions.