Sara Teasdale

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Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933), was an American lyrical poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri.

Teasdale's major themes were love, nature's beauty, and death, and her poems were much loved during the early 20th century. In 1918, she won the Columbia University Poetry Society prize (the forerunner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America for her volume, Love Songs. Her style and lyricism are well illustrated in her poem, "Spring Night" (1915), from that collection.

Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was not until she was nine that she was judged healthy enough to begin school – a private school for children just one block away from her home. In 1898 she attended Mary Institute, and the following year she enrolled in Hosmer Hall, from which she graduated in 1903. Her influences included the Italian actress Duse, American poet, Emily Dickinson, and English poet, Christina Rossetti. She made numerous trips to Europe, beginning in 1905.

In 1913, Teasdale was courted by two admirers. The poet Vachel Lindsay fell in love with her and at one point was sending her long, fantastic love letters on a daily basis expressing his true love. After that, he asked her to marry him, but though she had deep feelings for Vachel, she instead married Ernst Filsinger, a wealthy businessman in 1914 when she was thirty years old. The following year they moved to New York City, which became her home for the rest of her life. Teasdale and Lindsay remained fond but platonic friends throughout their lives, and Lindsay said that she was his life's "most inspiring, most satisfying friend." She was the inspiration for what Lindsay believed to be his greatest poem, "The Chinese Nightingale".

Teasdale was very much a product of her Victorian upbringing, and she was never able to experience in life the passion that she expressed in her poetry. She was not happy in her marriage, and she divorced Filsinger in 1929, against his wishes. Teasdale's health further declined. On the morning of January 29, 1933, in her New York City apartment, Teasdale took an overdose of sleeping pills, lay down in a warm bath, fell asleep, and never woke up again. Her last, and some say her finest, collection of verse, Strange Victory, was published posthumously that same year. In 1931, two years before Teasdale's suicide, Vachel Lindsay, her friend and former suitor, had also committed suicide.

In 1994, Sara Teasdale was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

[edit] Teasdale's suicide and "I Shall Not Care"

A common urban legend surrounds Teasdale's 1933 suicide. The legend claims that her poem "I Shall Not Care" (which features themes of abandonment, bitterness, and contemplation of death) was penned as a suicide note to a former lover. However, the poem was actually first published in her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea, a full 18 years before her suicide: ^[1]

I SHALL NOT CARE

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Sara Teasdale (1915)

[edit] External links

• Works by Sara Teasdale at Project Gutenberg
• Sara Teasdale's Photo & Gravesite
• Sara Teasdale Shrine Comprehensive site with bibliographies, free pdf books and audio recordings of Teasdale's poetry, and photos.

[edit] References