Audio
Track:
About
Teasdale grew up in a well-established family in Missouri, homeschooled due to her poor health until age nine. Frequent trips to Chicago as a youth whetted her appetite for poetry. Her first volume of poetry, Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems, was published in 1907, when she was 23. She continued to publish poetry prolifically throughout her life, and her final volume, Strange Victory, was published posthumously after she committed suicide.
Teasdale’s life was characterized by personal tumult. Her early love affair with poet Vachel Lindsey grew into deep friendship, and Teasdale eventually married Ernst Filsinger, a wealthy merchant. However, this marriage ended in divorce in 1929.
Teasdale was an important member of the poetry circle in New York City. She moved to New York in 1916 with Filsinger, and it was there that she won a number of prizes for her poetry (including the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize in 1918, which became the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry). Her poetry became increasingly refined and subtle over the course of her lifetime.
Her strong belief in the power of American poetry and the simplicity of poetry is demonstrated in this quote:
“A fairly wide acquaintance with the poetry of England makes me sure that we [Americans] are nearer than they are to producing great work…As for my own work, I feel that the best of it is done in brief, exceedingly simple poems. I try to say what moves me–I never care to surprise my reader; and I avoid…all words that are not met with in common speech, and all inversions of word or phrases…For me one of the greatest joys of poetry is to know it by heart–perhaps that is why the simple, song-like poems appeal to me most–they are the easiest to learn.”
The above quote is extracted from Our Poets of Today by Howard Willard Cook (New York : Moffat, Yard, 1918)
–Christie Finn
Related Information
Songs
A Winter Night
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
Alone
Joseph Turrin
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Three Songs
Barter
Simon Sargon
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Let It Be You
Child, Child
Richard Pearson Thomas
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Spring Rain
Echo's Songs
Song CollectionDaron Aric Hagen
Anonymous
William Blake
E. E. Cummings
Benjamin Jonson
Edgar Allan Poe
Kenneth Rexroth
Carl Sandburg
Gertrude Stein
Sara Teasdale
Walt Whitman
From the Sea: Five Songs for Soprano
Song CollectionJohn Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
I Am Not Yours
Daron Aric Hagen
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Echo's Songs
If You Have Forgotten
Elinor Remick Warren
Sara Teasdale
In a Burying Ground
John Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Let It Be Forgotten
George Crumb
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Three Early Songs
Let It Be Forgotten
Simon Sargon
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Let It Be You
Let It Be You
Simon Sargon
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Let It Be You
Let It Be You
Song CollectionSimon Sargon
Sara Teasdale
Lessons
John Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Mastery
John Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Mystery
Song CollectionLori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Nightfall
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Mystery
Old Tunes
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
Old Tunes
Richard Pearson Thomas
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Spring Rain
Pierrot, op. 15
Gardner Read
Sara Teasdale
Quiet Airs
Song CollectionErnst Bacon
Sara Teasdale
Emily Brontë
Walt Whitman
Robert Herrick
Emily Dickinson
A. E. Housman
William Blake
Refuge
John Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Spray
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Mystery
Spirit's House
John Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Song CollectionJohn Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Spring Rain
Song CollectionRichard Pearson Thomas
Sara Teasdale
Spring Rain
Richard Pearson Thomas
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Spring Rain
Spring Rain
Joseph Turrin
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Three Songs
Stars
Joseph Turrin
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Three Songs
The Ghost
Richard Pearson Thomas
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Spring Rain
The Hour
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
The Kiss
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Mystery
The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
Song CollectionLori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
The Metropolitan Tower
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
The Mystery
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Mystery
The Rose
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Mystery
The Strong House
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
There Will Be Rest
Simon Sargon
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Let It Be You
Three Early Songs
Song CollectionGeorge Crumb
Robert Southey
Sara Teasdale
Three Songs
Song CollectionJoseph Turrin
Sara Teasdale
To a Loose Woman
Lori Laitman
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
Twilight
Ernst Bacon
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Quiet Airs
Way of the River
Song CollectionRobert G. Patterson
Anonymous
James Joyce
Rudyard Kipling
Sara Teasdale
Walt Whitman
Wind Elegy
George Crumb
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Three Early Songs
Wind Elegy
Simon Sargon
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Let It Be You
Wood Song
John Woods Duke
Sara Teasdale
Song Collection: Songs Out of Sorrow: Six Songs for Mezzo
Videos
Recordings
Gardner Read: The Art of Song
(William Blake, Frances Frost, James Joyce, Gardner Read, Henry Russell, Rabindranath Tagore and Jean Starr Untermeyer)
1999
Books
Sheet Music
Echo's Songs
Composer(s): Daron Aric Hagen
Song(s): 1. Never Pain to Tell Thy Love
2. I Am Not Yours
3. A Dream Within a Dream
4. Echo's Song
5. I Am Rose
6. Lost
7. Why Did You Go
8. Since You Went Away
9. Thou Wouldst Be Loved
10. Look Down, Fair Moon
11. The Mild Mother
Mystery (Baritone Version)
Composer(s): Lori Laitman
Song(s): 1. Nightfall
2. Spray
3. The Kiss
4. The Mystery
5. The Rose
Voice Type: Low
Buy via Classical Vocal ReprintsMystery (Mezzo-Soprano Version)
Composer(s): Lori Laitman
Song(s): 1. Nightfall
2. Spray
3. The Kiss
4. The Mystery
5. The Rose
Voice Type: Medium
Buy via Classical Vocal ReprintsQuiet Airs
Composer(s): Ernst Bacon
Song(s): 1. Twilight
2. Gentle Greeting
3. The Divine Ship
4. Of Love
5. Eden
6. The Little Stone
7. Fond Affection
8. Stars
9. The Heart
10. Song of Snow-White Heads
11. The Lamb
12. To Musique, To Becalme His Fever
Selected Songs by Elinor Remick Warren
Composer(s): Elinor Remick Warren
Song(s): Includes Singing Earth, If You Have Forgotten, Lonely Roads, Sailing Homeward
Buy via Sheet Music PlusThree Early Songs
Composer(s): George Crumb
Song(s): 1. Night
2. Let It Be Forgotten
3. Wind Elegy
Songs By John Duke, Vol. 1
Composer(s): John Duke
Song(s): 1. When the Rose Is Brightest (Nathaniel Parker Willis)
2. Stopping by Woods on а Snowy Evening (Robert Frost)
3. The Puritan's Ballad (Elinor Wylie)
4. Midcentury Love Letter (Phyllis McGinley)
5. All Beauty Calls You to Me (Sara Teasdale)
6. Listen, I Love You (Sara Teasdale)
7. I am so weak а Thing (Sara Teasdale)
8. All Things in the World Can Rest, But I (Sara Teasdale)
9. Oh, My Love (Sara Teasdale)
10. Renouncement (Alice Meynell)
11. Noonday (Traditional Chinese)
12. Through Your Window (Traditional Chinese)
13. The Shoreless Sea (Traditional Chinese)
14. New Feet within My Garden Go (Emily Dickinson)
15. The Rose did Caper on Her Cheek (Emily Dickinson)
16. Have You Got а Brook in Your Little Heart? (Emily Dickinson)
17. I Taste а Liquor Never Brewed (Emily Dickinson)
18. The Better Part (George Santayana)
Voice Type: High
Buy via Keiser / Southern MusicThe John Duke Collection
Composer(s): John Duke
Song(s): Voices
On a March Day
Capri
Central Park at Dusk
Spray
Only for Me
There Will Be Stars
I Love the Lord
The Door
Love's Secret
Voice Type: Medium
Buy via Boosey & HawkesThe Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs
Composer(s): Lori Laitman
Song(s): 1. The Metropolitan Tower
2. A Winter Night
3. Old Tunes
4. The Strong House
5. The Hour
6. To a Loose Woman
Voice Type: High
Buy via Classical Vocal ReprintsWay of the River
Composer(s): Robert G. Patterson
Song(s): 1. from “Sun-Down Poem” (Whitman)
2. Strings in the Earth and Air (Joyce)
3. Psalm 65:9-12 (Douay-Rheims)
4. from “The Elephant's Child” (Kipling)
5. The Ballad of Poor Susan (Wordsworth) Interlude
6. The River/Deep River (Teasdale/Anonymous)