Today’s poet like, Vachel Lindsay, was once enormously popular with critics and public
alike but has fallen out of favor and into a kind of obscurity. In fact, she and Lindsay were contemporaries, Midwesterners from prosperous and
religious families whose lives paralleled each other and intersected. In fact Lindsay once tried to woo the lovely
young poet, but was rejected, probably because of his near poverty and bohemian
life style.
Sara
Teasdale was born August 8, 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the youngest child of large
family, born when her parents were both in their 40s. She was small, frail and sickly and under the
care of a nurse most of her life. Her
parents adored, sheltered, and spoiled her.
She was tutored at home until she was nine and
had almost no contact with other children except for her much older siblings. She learned to imitate adult conversation and
cultivate adult praise. He mother
thought she was “drawn to beauty.”
She completed her
education at a series of private schools, but her infirmities and shyness kept
her from being close to other students. She
began to write lyrical poems in school and was first published in local
newspaper.
After leaving school
she often traveled as she was able with a companion including influential trips to Europe and spent a good deal of
time in Chicago where she became
part of the group around Poetry Magazine. Harriet
Monroe encouraged her and provided a literary audience for her for the
first time. Teasdale’s first collection,
Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems was published in 1907. The title reference was to dancer Eleanora
Duse, who she read about but never saw perform. The book was a popular and critical
success. Critics admired her deceptive simplicity,
lyricism and musicality. As one said, “Miss Teasdale is first, last, and
always a singer.”
Two more volumes were
published in the next few years, Helen
of Troy, and Other Poems in 1911 Rivers to the Sea, in 1915.
Just before the latter
volume was published, Teasdale married Ernst
Filsinger, who had courted her, off and on, since their teens. Ernst had been wooing her at the same time as
Lindsay, who inundated her with passionate letters. But she chose the more stable businessman,
although the two poets remained close the rest of their lives. Lindsay never really got over her—which might
explain his decade of “exile” in that Seattle hotel room. One of his greatest poems, To a
Chinese Nightingale was said to be inspired by Teasdale.
By all accounts,
however, the were a deliriously happy young couple. Together they moved to New York City. Her 1917 book
Love
Songs reflected their happiness. The following year she was awarded the
first Columbia University Poetry Society
Prize—the award that would be re-named the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry—on the strength of that book.
She continued to write
during the 1920's and critics began to note an increasing depth—even hints at an
underlying philosophy, that they felt had been missing from her earlier work. These were Flame and Shadow in1920, Dark of the Moon in 1926,
and Stars To-night in 1930.
Even as she was
achieving professional respect as a poet, Teasdale’s personal life was
unraveling. She divorced her husband against his will in 1929.
She spent the rest of
her life as a semi-invalid, seldom venturing far from her Manhattan home. Her writing
began to explore a world in which she could not quite extract a sense of wonder
and beauty as she had before.
Teasdale fell ill with
a protracted and devastating case of pneumonia. In despair, she swallowed the contents of a
bottle of sedatives and died on January 29, 1933, just a few months after Lindsay took his life.
Strange
Victory, hailed as her most
mature and work, sophisticated in its deceptive simplicity, was published posthumously
the same year.
Here
is a poem from that last book.
I Shall not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her
rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ 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
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