(First published in 1920, this edition is characteristic o...)
First published in 1920, this edition is characteristic of Teasdale's work - short poems of enormous emotional and lyrical grace, and full of premonitions of death, loss and grief, and loving appreciation of the natural world.
(The collection of poems in Strange Victory are the last o...)
The collection of poems in Strange Victory are the last ones written by Sara Teasdale and published after her death in 1933. They include "In Memory of Vachel Lindsay".
Sara Teasdale was an American lyric poet, writer and editor, whose short, personal lyrics were noted for their classical simplicity and quiet intensity.
Background
Sara Trevor Teasdale was born on August 8, 1884, in St. Louis, Missouri, into an old, established, and devout family. She was the youngest child of Mary Elizabeth Willard and John Warren Teasdale. At the time of Sara's birth, Mary was 40, and John was 45. Teasdale had three siblings. She had two brothers, George, who was the oldest child at 20, and John Warren Jr. was 14. Teasdale also had a sister, named Mary (she was fondly called "Maime"), and she was 17. Mary loved her sister Sara and took very good care of her. Sara was named after her grandmother. Teasdale's first word was "pretty". According to her mother, Sara's love of pretty things was what inspired her poetry.
Teasdale grew up in a sheltered atmosphere. She was the youngest child. Because of that, she was spoiled and waited on like a princess. She never had to do normal chores, like make her bed, or do the dishes. She was known to have described herself as "a flower in a toiling world".
Education
Teasdale had poor health for much of her childhood, so she was homeschooled until the age of nine. It was at the age of ten that she was well enough to begin school. She started at Mary Institute in 1898, but switched to Hosmer Hall in 1899, graduating in 1903.
After private schooling and a period of travel in Europe and the Near East, Teasdale settled in Chicago. Teasdale's first poem was published in William Marion Reedy's Reedy's Mirror, a local newspaper, in 1907. Her first collection of poems, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, was published that same year.
From 1904 to 1907, Teasdale was also a member of The Potters, led by Lillie Rose Ernst, a group of female artists in their late teens and early twenties who published, from 1904 to 1907, The Potter's Wheel, a monthly artistic and literary magazine in St. Louis.
Teasdale's second collection, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was published in 1911. It was well received by critics, who praised its lyrical mastery and romantic subject matter.
Teasdale's third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea, was published in 1915. It was and is a bestseller, being reprinted several times. In 1916 she and her husband, Filsinger, moved to New York City, where they lived in an Upper West Side apartment on Central Park West. However, Filsinger's constant business travel caused Teasdale much loneliness. After divorce with her husband in 1929, she moved to New York. There, except for visits to France and England, she lived until her death on January 29, 1933.
Primarily a lyric poet, interested in committing personal emotions to verse, Miss Teasdale adhered to no school and was little affected by contemporary currents of revolt and experimentation in poetry. Her unmistakably feminine lyrics frequently resembled those of Christina Rossetti, whom she greatly admired, and this similarity may be traced in her most familiar works: Sonnets to Duse (1907); Rivers to the Sea (1915); Love Songs (1917); Flame and Shadow (1920); Dark of the Moon (1926); Strange Victory (1933); and Stars Tonight (1930), a book of poems for juveniles.
Physical Characteristics:
Teasdale was always very frail and caught diseases easily. For most of her life, she had a nurse companion that took care of her.
In 1933, Teasdale caught chronic pneumonia and it weakened her not only in body but also in mind and spirit. No longer able to see the beauty in simple things, Teasdale committed suicide, overdosing on sleeping pills, at age 48 in New York on January 29, 1933.
Interests
Travelling
Writers
Christina Rossetti
Connections
From 1911 to 1914 Teasdale was courted by several men, including the poet Vachel Lindsay, who was truly in love with her but did not feel that he could provide enough money or stability to keep her satisfied. She chose to marry Ernst Filsinger, a longtime admirer of her poetry, on December 19, 1914. They had a happy marriage, but it was too good to last. They divorced in 1929, and she lived the rest of her life only for her poetry.
husband:
Ernst B. Filsinger
Friend:
Vachel Lindsay
References
Sara Teasdale: Woman and Poet
A moving biography of one of the most widely read poets in America for over a decade preceding her death in 1933. Sara Teasdale's work reportedly influenced writers like John Berryman, Louise Bogan and Sylvia Plath.