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.

Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was at age 9 that she was well enough to begin school. In 1898 she went to Mary Institute and to Hosmer Hall in 1899 where she finished in 1903.

In 1913 Teasdale fell in love with poet Vachel Lindsay. He wrote her daily love letters, but nevertheless she married Ernst Filsinger in 1914 when she was 30. Teasdale and Lindsay remained friends throughout their lives.

In 1918, she won the Columbia University Poetry Society prize and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America for her volume Love Songs.

Teasdale was a product of her upbringing, and was never able to experience the passion that she expressed in her poetry. She was not happy in her marriage, and she divorced in 1929. On the morning of January 29, 1933, she overdosed on sleeping pills in her apartment, lay down in a warm bath, fell asleep, and never woke up again. In 1931 Lindsay, her friend, 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

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[edit] References

  1. ^ Teasdale, Sara (1915-2007). Rivers to the Sea. Montana: Kessinger Pub. Ltd.. ISBN 978-1417917457.