Yesterday, in response to the post about love not always working out, I received a great recommendation from a friend.
I was introduced to poet Sara Teasdale. (Where had she been all my life?)
She was popular with the public and many critics, though others called her work “unsophisticated. Which means she and I will get along just fine.
Though not considered a major poet, she was popular and good enough to win the first Columbia Prize for Poetry in 1918, would later become the Pulitzer Poetry Prize.
She had a troubles in love, dating poet Vachel Lindsay before marrying another man. Years later, she divorced and rekindled her ill-fated love affair with Lindsay, who was married by this time, himself.
Things didn’t work out. Lindsay died by suicide in 1931. Teasdale took her own life two years later.
Her wonderful “tell-off” poem, “I Shall Not Care,” was rumored to have been a suicide note to the deceased Lindsay. But it was written years before. It is heart-breaking and wickedly good.
I Shall not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
Poetic Champions 