Sara Teasdale’s missed-chance love is a common theme in her work. An Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder shares a birthday. Poem from our birthday poet.
The date is August 8th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Sara Teasdale, American poet.
Born in 1884 in St. Louis Missouri, Sara was a sickly child and her mother kept her at home. At age 10 she was finally deemed healthy enough to attend school.
Despite having entered into a more public existence, during her teens Sara was still fairly solitary. Her mother had built Sara her own suite in the family home and Sara spent most of her time working, sleeping, and eating in her own quarters. Her enrollment in school was a positive. Sara Teasdale gained friends and a mentor which chased away much of the loneliness to which she had grown accustomed.
Done with school at 18, Teasdale’s mentor, Lillie Rose Ernst, encouraged her to join a women’s group she was forming. In 1904, Teasdale was a member of the Potters. The Potters was a group of young women in St Louis that worked together to publish The Potter’s Wheel, a monthly literary magazine. Teasdale was a member until 1907 when she began to focus on her own career.
Teasdale saw her first success with her collection titled Helen of Troy and Other Poems in 1911. She began to attract the attention of male admirers of her poetry and fell in love with Vachel Lindsay, a fellow poet.
However, Lindsay was a struggling artist, and did not propose marriage to Teasdale. She ended the affair heartbroken, and married Ernst Filsinger in 1914.
She continued to write and publish successfully, despite a marriage strained by her husband’s constant absence for business. Her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea was a best-seller and a few years later she published Love Songs, which won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1918. (Here’s a collection of all of her poetry.)
Despite literary success, Teasdale was prone to bouts of depression and loneliness. She and her husband had no children and they would divorce when Sara was in her 40s. She reignited a friendship with Lindsay who was no married with children. It seemed this only compounded her loneliness and she began to suffer from serious depression.
No ties left to the world, Teasdale overdosed on sleeping pills at age 49. Over three hundred of her poems are in the public domain, with notable poems including: “There Will Come Soft Rains” and “I Shall Not Care.”
And today is the birthday of Bob Smith, American surgeon and co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Bob Smith’s struggle with alcoholism started as soon as he began drinking in college at Dartmouth and continued through medical school and then as a practicing doctor.
Bob Smith tried and failed to stay sober for years. But it wasn’t until he befriended Bill Wilson, another recovering alcoholic that the two successfully were able to remain sober.
Bob Smith, with the help of Bill Wilson, had his last drink on June 10th, 1935. The two went on to co-found Alcoholics Anonymous, publishing the organizations first “Big Book” in 1939 which included stories from 100 men who had achieved sobriety. In 1946, a new edition was published that included the 12 Steps.
Union Square
Sara Teasdale
With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps’ flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.
I leaned to catch the words he said
That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
The words my heart was calling.
And on we walked and on we walked
Past the fiery lights of the picture shows —
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
On the errand each man knows.
And on we walked and on we walked,
At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
My heart’s unuttered cry.
With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps’ flare —
But oh, the girls who ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.