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Neglected Poet: Sara Teasdale

© Linda Sue Grimes

Sara Teasdale is a much neglected American poet, whose lyrics have brought beauty and comfort to many young women suffering the pain of lost love. It is, no doubt in part, the intense personal nature of her work that is responsible for her current lack of readership, and also the negativity of the confessionals along with the over-all doom-saying voices of twentieth-century American poetry that have contributed to the overshadowing of this poet's art.

One of her most anthologized poems is "Barter," which in 1963 appeared in the second edition of Laurence Perrine's widely studied Sound and Sense; Perrine remained loyal to the poem, including it until the eight edition. But when Thomas Arp replaced Perrine as the main editor of the ninth edition of Sound and Sense, Teasdale's "Barter" disappears. It's sad that Arp chose to eliminate that poem; it makes a statement that we can all use as we tread into the twenty-first century:

*Barter
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Born in St. Louis on August 8, 1884, Teasdale was home-schooled but graduated from Hosmer Hall in 1903. She often traveled to Chicago, where she joined Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine circle. The St. Louis, Missouri, weekly Reedy's Mirror published her first poem in May 1907. That same year saw publication of her first book, Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems. Her second book of poetry, Helen of Troy, and Other Poems, came out in 1911.

She was courted by poet Vachel Lindsay but rejected him. She married Ernst Filsinger in 1914. In 1915 her third collection of poems, Rivers to the Sea, was published. In 1916 she and her husband moved to New York City. In 1918 she was awarded the Columbia University Poetry Society prize (forerunner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry) and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America for Love Songs (1917). She served as the editor of two anthologies, The Answering Voice: One Hundred Love Lyrics by Women (1917), and Rainbow Gold for Children (1922).

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