Teasdale teases…

The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale

by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

New York: The Macmillan Co., 1937.

311 pages

Sara Teasdale wrote about 350 poems, and some of them are quite long.

She is literate—no doubt about that, there are plenty of classical allusions to the gods.

For my taste, there is no personality in her Collected Poems—she writes “about” stuff instead of illuminating stuff.

In 1918 she won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry—it must have been a lean year.

There are bright notes here and there:

“Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,

No lonely place where thou hast never trod,

No desert thou hast left uncarpeted.”

from “Sappho,” p. 109

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