April is poetry month, a festival more honored by schools and publishers than by the general public. This year, our April is filled with fear of the coronavirus pandemic, and with questions about what the future holds. Poetry may seem like a frivolous escape, but if we ignore it, we may be missing one element of comfort that would help us get through these stressful days.

Poetry can help us see the world with fresh eyes and remember the sights that will be with us all our lives rather than the jangled thoughts of today. As we walk through today’s deserted streets, the words of Sara Teasdale, who wrote almost 100 years ago, can help us to see April with fresh eyes:

The roofs are shining from the rain,
     The sparrows twitter as they fly,
  And with a windy April grace
     The little clouds go by. (April)

Sara Teasdale was an American poet who had a gift for seeing the world through fresh eyes. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1884 and was home schooled for much of her childhood. She devoted herself to reading and started writing poetry as a teenager. After she went to high school, she became one of a group of women who published The Potter’s Wheel, a literary journal in St. Louis and contributed poems and essays to the journal.

During that time, she traveled frequently to Chicago where she met many writers and artists including Vachel Lindsay, a young poet famous for his attempt to revive the tradition of oral poetry. Lindsay and Teasdale apparently fell in love, but Lindsay did not have enough money to support a wife. Teasdale eventually married another admirer, Ernst Filsinger, a prosperous businessman.  

After her marriage in 1914 Teasdale continued to write and her third collection of poetry River to the Sea, published in 1916 became a bestseller and earned her a Pulitzer Prize. She and her husband moved to New York City where they became part of a circle of writers and artists.

Teasdale’s poetry is lyrical and filled with images of the world around us. Many of her poems have been published in children’s anthologies, but they have an enduring appeal for adults too. They are the kind of poems that often pop into your mind during walks in the country.

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.   (February Twilight)

Sara Teasdale’s life did not continue as happily as her poetry did. She divorced her husband in 1929, her health deteriorated, and she became an invalid. She restarted her friendship with Vachel Lindsay, but he too had fallen on hard times and eventually killed himself.

Sara Teasdale herself committed suicide in 1933 at the age of 48. Her poetry collections live on in most libraries and much of her work can be found on the Gutenberg Project site. It is well worth reading and rereading. It is impossible to know why her life came to such a tragic end, but her poetry still brings joy to the reader. Many of her poems will linger in your mind for years, perhaps especially this one, which seems a fitting elegy for her short life.

WHEN I am dead and over me bright April
     Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
  Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
     I shall not care.

  I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
     When rain bends down the bough,
  And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
     Than you are now.

(All of the poems quoted above are available in many digital formats on the
Gutenberg Project website. http://www.gutenberg.org