OctPoWriMo and Growing as a Poet - A Profile of Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale, Award Winning Lyrical Poet

When I first started writing poetry, I didn't read much poetry at all. It wasn't until I began maturing as a poet that I gained the confidence to not only read the work of past poets, but to study them in order to come to know more about poetry as an art form.

Discovering the lives of women poets who have lived before me has been particularly inspiring to me, so much so I started a series of profiles of women in literary history.

I like to call them our Literary Grannies. 

Today let's meet Sara Teasdale, a Pulitzer prize winning lyrical poet who lived from 1884 - 1933.
 
I don’t remember when exactly I fell in love with Sara

I love how mysterious she looks here. 

Teasdale. I think it was during the era when I was being haunted by Edna St. Vincent Millay. (A brief aside: Later in September, I will write of recent visit to her home in Austerlitz, New York.)

For now, we will focus on Millay's lyrical contemporary, Miss Sara Teasdale.

She was born in 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was unhealthy as a child so she didn’t start school until she was nine-years-old. She came from a wealthy family who was able to both provide for her and take care of all her needs. She went to the prestigious Hosmer Hall, an all girls school in St. Louis. 

Zoe Akins, celebrated playwright, also attended Hosmer Hall at this time.

Teasdale created a women’s literary society with some of her teen friends which they called “The Potters.” They even published their own literary journal The Potters Wheel where Sara received her first publishing credits.

She looked to several different poets as well as actress Eleanora Duse as role models and inspiration for her writing. Among her favorites were Christina Rossetti, Mary Robinson and Emily Dickinson.

She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 (which was then called Columbia University Poetry Prize). Today’s readers might find her early twentieth century style out of flavor. I ask you read it as if it was just written today.

Hold the words lightly and see what these words written one-hundred years ago by a young, inspired poet may teach you now.

It is Not a Word

It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.

Faults

They came to tell your faults to me,

They named them over one by one;

I laughed aloud when they were done,

I knew them all so well before,—

Oh, they were blind, too blind to see

Your faults had made me love you more.

                To E.

I have remembered beauty in the night,

     Against black silences I waked to see

     A shower of sunlight over Italy

And green Ravello dreaming on her height;

I have remembered music in the dark,

     The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,

     And running water singing on the rocks

When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more

     Than a vague prelude to the thought of you --

     You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

          Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

           And when I think of you, I am at rest.

Many of her lyrics are love poems inspired by two men: one she married (Ernst Filsinger) and one who adored her and ended his life with suicide in 1931 (Vaclev Lindsay).She divorced Filsinger, who offered financial stability in addition to her wealthy family, in 1929. Some sources say it is her seven year friendship with young poet Margaret Conklin that caused the marital split. 

On January 29, 1933, Sara Teasdale followed other creative people including her one-time love, Vaclev Lindsay, into suicide. She overdosed on barbiturates and climbed into the bathtub, yet another tragedy upon yet another creative woman.

* Parts of this blog post were originally published as a part of the Literary Women from A to Z series in 2012.

-- Julie Jordan Scott is a creative life coach, award-winning story teller, actor, director and Mommy extraordinaire. Read more of her inspirational writings at her blog, Julie Unplugged, and watch for the grand opening of her new blog in Mid-September. 

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Poetry Prompt Octrober 7: There is Power in Narrative Poetry

One of the claims to fame about myself that I say with about as much humble pride as possible is my two time victory as the Bakersfield Front Porch Story Slam Champion! 

Sometimes I think my wins may not be  fair: I am a writer and an actor - two talents that lead naturally to storytelling, right? I actually think it is being a Mommy and having a Father who liked to tell us stories as children that molded me into a storyteller.

The type of poetry most related to storytelling is the Narrative Poem.

Please don't start sweating as I say that - please!

Telling stories in poetry and prose is as simple as this: give your readers a beginning (the set up - the journalistic five W's - who what when where why) followed by the conflict or the "what happened" followed by the resolution.

At story slams, you get up to the mic with nothing written. No note cards, no sharpie pen letters on the hand - and by using this simple outline formula in my head I have told winning stories. Lots of time the stories other people told were good, but they were too rambly. With only five minutes to tell the story, one needs to be ready at any time for that "one more minute" time to be called and then zoom gently into the conclusion - the end, the solution (or the option to end with a non-solution question.)

Here at OctPoWriMo you might even practice writing a three stanza poem. One stanza for the set up, one stanza for the conflict, and one stanza for the conclusion.

Narrative poems are a part of Western Heritage. Before there was widespread literacy, bards and balladeers would share news via narrative poem. It was as well known to the children of the fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe to know narrative poems as it is for the children of today to know about the latest video game or Disney movie.

By practicing and playing with this form of poetry, you are allowing yourself the honor of stepping into a time honored form of poetry.

If you are wracked for ideas, jot down a summary of your day yesterday focusing on the "what happened" or look back at one of your favorite children's stories and retell it.

One of my favorite Narrative Poems I found was Captivity by modern poet Louise Erdrich writing in the voice of Mary Rowlandson, a woman who was taken captive by the Wampanoag in the 17th Century and soon became adopted lovingly into their circle. Louise takes on the voice of Mary, as Narrator, and paints an astonishing picture for us.

As you can see, the options are nearlessly endless.

A couple examples for you to read if you feel called:
 

Robert Frost: Out, Out

Gertrude Stein: Hotel Francois 1er

Louise Erdrich: Captivity

Here are some quotes and sentence starters to get the juices flowing:

"Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here."
Sue Monk Kidd

"The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon."
Brandon Sanderson

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
Joan Didion

Wordprompt: Narrator

Sentence starters:

The story I need to narrate is....
I long to tell the story of.....
The story that urges me to tell it to the world is.....
 

Finally - Here is a complete explanation from e-how on how to write a narrative poem. I almost don't share it because it may bog you down with all of its... this and that and the other. Please DO NOT read it if you tend to get wrapped up in "doing things right"... or I suppose you could write a narrative poem about the story you tell about being a perfectionist or a "goody-two-shoes."

Most importantly, please have fun with this or if it doesn't feel like you today, feel free to write something completely different. Any poetry at all is such a gift we give to the world!

Writing poetry, any poetry, after all is the most important aspect of this experience.

-- Julie Jordan Scott

  Whether we like it or no, poetry and poets have an image.  Say that you're a poet and people will often imagine that you're a head in the clouds dreamer with no practical knowledge or skills, or that you have a drink problem or are on drugs, or that you have sex with anything that has a pulse.  These clichés can put a lot of people off.   Years ago when I did a bit of creative writing at university, my poetry teacher Tim Liardet, a very fine poet, asked the class to think about the clichés associated with poetry and poets and write a poem about them.  So here is my effort.
 

In Order to be a Poet…..

You don’t have to be high brow, low brow or a cow.

You don’t have to be mad, bad or sad.

You don’t have to have a PHD, a GCSE or be an S.O.B.

You don’t have to be well read, well bred or dead.

Don’t have to be Greek, a geek or a freak.

Don’t need to be hairy, scary or a fairy.

Don’t need to be medicated, alienated or inebriated.

Don’t need to be poor, a whore or insecure.

Don’t need a Rolls-Royce, or to be James Joyce; just need your own voice.

  So don't let what other people think stop you from achieving what you want from poetry.  You don't have to be a cliché, you just have to be yourself.

Janet Parfitt

photograph from i-stock royalty free photography