Teasdale, Sara (1884-1933), was an American lyric poet. Some of her work anticipates modern feminist verse and the intimate, autobiographical style known as confessional poetry. A large number of Teasdale’s poems deal with love and death. Many of the speakers in her lyrics are women who face the death or desertion of a loved one. They also face the fact of their own mortality with disillusionment, but not as cynics. Teasdale associated moral and spiritual beauty with the harmonies of the natural world.
Teasdale was born on Aug. 8, 1884, in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to writing her own poetry, she edited an anthology of love lyrics by women called The Answering Voice (1917, revised 1928). She also edited Rainbow Gold (1922), a collection of poetry for young people. Her Collected Poems was published in 1937. She died on Jan. 29, 1933.
