Love Songs: Poetry of Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale - the winner of one of the earliest Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, winner of the Poetry Society of America prize, and other honors - believed passionately in the power and beauty of love, yet in her own life, love was not enough; she died by her own hand after a long illness. The man she may have loved more than any other, the poet Vachel Lindsay, killed himself two years earlier.

Her poetry ranges a full gamut from utter joy to deep loneliness. She expresses herself with utter simplicity:

Slowly over the earth
The wings of night are falling
My heart like the bird in the tree
Is calling... calling... calling....

She can be wonderfully playful, telling a thrush to go call her lover:

When he harkens what you say
Bid him, lest he miss me
Leave his work or leave his play
And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!

Her soul valued beauty and love above all else:

Oh, let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.

Like many of America's women poets, she is rather on the back shelf these days, but she deserves better.

Enjoy this reading of her poetry!

A Freshwater Seas production.