This young girl from St. Louis grew up to write “Life has loveliness to sell" and many others...
I remember when I
first started discovering some of the women poets of the early twentieth
century. It felt like I had found a huge room full of women who were like
sisters, mothers, cousins and aunties to me.
Sara Teasdale was one of them. A lyrical poet whose work focused on words from a women’s perspective, she won the first Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918, a prize that would later be renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Today I was thumbing through my collection of “all things Sara” when I realized I have used her as an inspiration for creativity many, many times. She has showed up in lessons I have taught, she has appeared in essays, her images fill my photo album: how had I put those memories of our earliest “relationship” aside.
Sometimes that happens with passion: we fall head over heels in love with one.. and then another… and then another and while the one a few ones back is still tucked away back there, sometimes underneath the surface she is still doing her poetic best to awaken the memory.
Literary Grannies do that: they walk around in your thoughts, tip toe by tip toe, untraceable sometimes for years. When you do manage to notice, they are never angry. They may even give you candy and most definitely a hug or a kiss and a squeeze on the cheek.
If you haven’t “met” her before, please settle into your seat and allow her words to fill your breath, your heart and your mind.
“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.”
☼
“I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful when rain bends down the bough.”
☼
“I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”
☼
“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the
years can make it wise.”
☼
“No one worth possessing can quite be possessed”
☼
“My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.”
☼
“I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies--
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold”
☼
“Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not
far, it never will be far”
Sara Teasdale in Mixed Media: lyric poet with a sad end to her life.
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