Rivers to the Sea

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American poet. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Teasdale suffered from poor health as a child before entering school at the age of ten. In 1904, after graduating from Hosmer Hall, Teasdale joined the group of female artists known as The Potters, who published The Potter’s Wheel, a monthly literary and visual arts magazine, from 1904 to 1907. With her first two collections—Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems (1907) and Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)—Teasdale earned a reputation as a gifted lyric poet from critics and readers alike. In 1916, following the publication of her bestselling Rivers to the Sea (1915), she moved to New York City with her husband Ernst Filsinger. There, she won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for Love Songs (1917), her fourth collection. Frustrated with Filsinger’s prolonged absences while traveling for work, she divorced him in 1929 and moved to another apartment in the Upper West Side. Renewing her friendship with poet Vachel Lindsay, she continued to write and publish poems until her death by suicide in 1933.