SCRIBBLE
A SPOTLIGHT ON POETS
by Eleanor Wade
Photograph by Gerhard Sisters, ca. 1910 Missouri History Museum
Who was Sarah Teasdale?
S
arah Teasdale was a 20th century American poet, who as a sickly child grew up in a sheltered and lonely atmosphere. She was forced to amuse herself with imaginary worlds, stories and poems, where she was very much influenced by the poetry of Christina Rossetti. She started to write when she was young, publishing her poems first in the local newspaper, and then later going on to publish her own collections such as: Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, Rivers to the Sea and Flame and Shadow.
changing perspectives on beauty, love, and death. Although many later critics would not consider Teasdale a major poet, she was popular in her lifetime with both the public and critics. She won the first Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918, a prize that would later be renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
S
arah was always frail and sickly, but 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 at age he received public admiration for her 48 in New York, on January 29, 1933. Her well-crafted lyrical and highly pictorial final book of poetry was published that year. poetry which centred on a woman's
S
10
