
And why not? For whom else could the following possibly be written?
|
Can be quite possessed; Lay that on your heart, My young angry dear; This truth, this hard and precious stone, Lay it on your hot cheek, Let it hide your tear. Hold it like a crystal When you are alone And gaze in the depths of the icy stone. Long, look long and you will be blessed: No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed. I grew older and as the pain lessened, I forgot the comfort I had found in Sara's poetry and eventually forgot about her. That is, until I "found" her again by accident, browsing on the web, and re-read some of her poems. I felt a wealth of emotions, an intensity I hadn't felt in a long time. Fascinated, I read more, learning about the woman who lived at the turn of the century, through World War I, the 20's and the early thirties. Much of the passion she imbued in her words can be dismissed as facile sentiment. Until you think twice, and the fervor, the very real awareness seeps through your conscious and you vibrate with empathy. Sara married, disliked it, divorced and never tried again. Her emotions, rubbed raw by this experience, imbue her poetry with a certain bitterness, but as the years passed, and she battled with the manic depression that hospitalized her, she gained a sense of peace, of her own place in time.
Did you know she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1918 for Love Songs? Love SongsTo E.I have remembered beauty in the night, Against black silences I waked to see A shower of sunlight over Italy And green Ravello dreaming on her height; I have remembered music in the dark, The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's, And running water singing on the rocks When once in English woods I heard a lark. But all remembered beauty is no more Than a vague prelude to the thought of you -- You are the rarest soul I ever knew, Lover of beauty, knightliest and best; My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore, And when I think of you, I am at rest. Let It Be Forgotten
Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
The Solitary
Now that I am older, and hopefully wiser than I was when Sara Teasdale first spoke to my aching heart, I
find her words still hold prescience -- and comfort.
She thought she'd soon be forgotten, as you can tell from her words:
A little while when I am gone
A while these nights and days will burn
But she hasn't been forgotten. I am not alone in treasuring her words.
Would you like to see what others have to say about
Sara Teasdale?
Or read more poetry by Sara Teasdale?
Many readers have written me asking for biographical information about Sara. There is a wonderful biography, Sara Teasdale, Woman & Poet, written by
William Drake, published by Harper & Row in 1979. There may be a copy in your public library.
PLEASE NOTE:
Apologies as well to those who signed up for a newsletter I never had time to
write and send out. Please be assured your email addresses are not used for
anything else.
In case you are wondering what has been taking up my time, I am happy to report
that my own writing career is doing very nicely. You'll find all the details on my
Bonnie Hamre Home Page
Would you like to know more about Sara, born Sarah Trevor?
The Gutenberg Project
Web Design by All contents Copyright © 1998 - 2004. All rights reserved.
All Graphics Copyright Jelane K. Johnson, 1996 & 1997
|