Author: Sara Teasdale
Profile: Sara Teasdale was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. and died in New York City, New York, U.S. From the year 1914, after she married Ernst Filsinger, she used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger. Flame and Shadow and Love Songs are her most notable works. During most of her childhood she had poor health so she was home schooled till the age of nine years and started formal school at ten years of age. In 1898 she went to Mary Institute, in 1899 to Hosmer Hall and in 1903 she completed her graduation.
The Teasdale family first resided at 3668 Lindell Blv and later at 38 Kingsbury Place in St. Louis, Missouri both of which her mother had designed. Sara had a private suite for herself on the second floor accessible to guests by appointment. It was at this suite where Sara slept, worked and dined alone. She was ‘The Potters’ member from 1904 to 1907 which was a female artist’s group in their early twenties and late teens. In 1907, her first poem was published in a Reedy’s Mirror a local newspaper. That same year, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, her first poem collection was also published. Many men including Vachel Lindsay, the poet courted Teasdale from 1911 to 1914. She however married a longtime admirer of her poetry, Ernst Filsinger on December 19, 1914.
Writing style: Sara Teasdale’s poems are in classical style consistently. He has written technically pure, excellent and openhearted lyrics mostly in such conventional verse forms as sonnets or quatrains.
Published Texts:
Works
1907 – Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems
1911 – Helen of Troy and Other Poems
1915 – Rivers to the Sea
1917 – Love Songs
1920 – Flame and Shadow
1926 – Dark of the Moon
1930 – Stars T0-night
1933 – Strange Victory
1918 – Barter
Awards and Acknowledgements:
1918 – Won a Pulitzer Prize for ‘Love Songs’ her 1917 poetry collection
‘There Will Come Soft Rains’her poem from the 1920 collection Flame and Shadow inspired and is featured in a famous short story of the same name by Ray Bradbury.
Arlington LeGrande’s favorite poet is Teasdale, who is the main character of Jacquelyn Mitchard’s novel The Most Wanted.
Teasdale was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1994.
Her works were published for the first time in Italy in 2010, translated by Silvio Raffo.
‘Pierrot’s Song’ her poem was set in the American composer Timonthy Hoekman’s song cycle Seranade for piano and tenor in 2003.
Composer Marion Rogers Hickman set to music, the two poems of Teasdale, ‘Dusk in June’ and ‘May Night’
Z.Randall Stroope set to music, Teasdale’s poem And Sure Shining in the year 2017.
Hans Bridger Heruth, the composer set her poem Joy to Music in a piece commissioned by Dustin Cates and the Heartland Men’s Chorus in 2018.
