A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 2

She didn’t live here her entire life, but St. Louis claims poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) as one of its own. 

The Teasdale family was well-to-do. Their first home was on Lindell Boulevard, in the area we call “midtown,” the intersection of Grand and Lindell boulevards. Today, the Grand Entertainment District is on the north side of Lindell and St Louis University is on the south. The Teasdale home was located on land that is now occupied by university buildings.

The family moved farther west to Kingsbury Place, a few blocks north of Forest Park. This area was being developed as an enclave of private streets before, during, and after the St. Louis World’s Fair. Teasdale’s house still stands; Kingsbury Place is still a beautiful street with large, well-maintained homes. (Not long ago, it was sold for $1.1 million.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Flame and Shadow: A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 1

In her lifetime, poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was popular with the public and critics alike. Her third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea (1915) was a bestseller; her fourth, Love Songs (1917), won what eventually was named the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her final collection, Strange Victory (1933), was published after her death and was well-received by critics. 

Her poetry gradually fell out of critical favor. I read her poems in English literature textbooks in high school and college, but her work was fast disappearing by the 1980s. (Critics and scholars often get suspicious if something is popular with the public.) Recently, her work has begun to make something of a comeback, and rightfully so. 

And just in time for a live Tweetspeak Twitter party, but without Twitter. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Love Songs:” Claiming Sara Teasdale for St. Louis

My town of St. Louis claims Sara Teasdale as one of its own, but you wouldn’t know it from any sign, memorial, plaque or other designation. The city does not discriminate; T.S. Eliot is treated the same way, although he does have a plaque on the sidewalk in front of where his house once stood.

Teasdale was born in St. Louis in 1884. She lived in a house on Lindell Boulevard, today the northern boundary of Forest Park. In 1902, her family moved to Kingsbury Place, a few blocks north and what in St Louis was and is known as a “private street.” The city’s Central West End is filled with these private streets, built by developers for the wealthy. Homeowners on these streets today continue to be responsible for street repair, maintenance, and snow removal, and the homes and the streets have largely survived the vicissitudes of urban decay.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Sara Teasdale in 1910.

Learning about Christmas Poems

You think you everything there is know about Christmas poems, and then you find out you don’t.

Until fairly recently, it was believed that the most famous Christmas poem of all – A Visit from St. Nicholas – was written by poet Clement Clark Moore (1779-1863). Later scholarship has suggested the real author to be Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828), a farmer, surveyor and justice of the peace in New York who joined the Revolutionary Army in 1775.

What we do know for certain is that Moore read the poem to his children for Christmas in 1822, and it was published anonymously in 1823 in the Troy (NY) Sentinel. The Sentinel editor did not know who the author was, only that it had been sent anonymously to him in the mail. And we know this poem, more than any other account, fixed forever many of the characteristics attributed to Santa Claus. The poem was published in many publications (copyright laws being what they were), until a bound and illustrated version appeared in 1848.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Artwork by John A. Hows from Christmas In Art And Song. New York: The Arundel Printing and Publishing Company, 1879.

Word Candy Wednesday

My Western City, Dreaming

“How many times I saw my western city/Dream by her river.”
--Sara Teasdale, “Sunset: St. Louis” from Flame and Shadow

"A mourning figure walks, and will not rest..."
--Vachel Lindsay, "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight"


That’s what old river towns do,
dream by their rivers, dream of the
days of glory and wealth and triumphs,
when the making of things was important
and the shipping of things was vital and the
banking of things was critical and the litigating
of things made and shipped and banked was lifeblood;
and now old river towns doze and occasionally half-wake,
with ears closed and one eye open, dreaming by their rivers,
and with ears open and one eye closed, dreaming of the
mourning figure walking
the prairie streets.


This is a poem for the Random Act of Poetry sponsored by the High Calling Blogs. L.L. Barkat provided the prompt: Begin with a sentence with a picture in it, like from a poem, and then write from a memory or event or simply what comes to mind. I chose the lines above from the Sara Teasdale and Vachel Lindsay poems, both of which are featured today at TweetSpeak Poetry for National Poetry Month.

And Louise Gallagher at Recover Your Joy got inspired by all of this and wrote "River Deep."