Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) was an American lyric poet whose short, musical poems of love, beauty and loss were very popular. Her collection Love Songs won the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry, in 1918.
St. Louis
Sara Trevor Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 8 August 1884, into a wealthy and religious family. Considered delicate, she was educated at home until the age of nine and at private schools.
With friends she produced a monthly magazine, The Potter's Wheel, and published her first book, Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems, in 1907.
Love Songs
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911) and Rivers to the Sea (1915) made her name. Love Songs (1917) won a special prize from the Poetry Society in 1918, the forerunner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Her poems, simple in form, explore longing, solitude and the beauty of nature. She was courted by the poet Vachel Lindsay but married a businessman, Ernst Filsinger, in 1914.
Last years
In New York she lived increasingly in seclusion. Flame and Shadow (1920), Dark of the Moon (1926) and Stars To-night (1930), poems for children, followed.
She divorced in 1929. Ill and depressed after Lindsay's suicide in 1931, she died in New York on 29 January 1933. Strange Victory was published after her death.
Anecdotes
The first Pulitzer for poetry
In 1918 Love Songs received a special award of the Poetry Society, funded by the Pulitzer bequest; the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry as such was created in 1922.
A poem in Bradbury
Her poem There Will Come Soft Rains gave its title and theme to a famous short story by Ray Bradbury (1950), set in an empty house after a nuclear war.
Frequently asked questions
What prize did Sara Teasdale win?
A special award in 1918 for Love Songs, considered the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
What is There Will Come Soft Rains about?
Nature continuing peacefully after a war, indifferent to whether humanity survives.
Where did she live?
In St. Louis, then in New York from 1916.