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Allegra's avatar

So grateful to have come by this post, what a beautiful poem. Thank you for sharing 🙏

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F.F. Teague (Fliss)'s avatar

I knew the name Sara Teasdale, I think, but none of her poems. Thanks for this one, with the interesting notes. I wonder whether anything in her personal life plays into the tone here, the thrill and the vulnerability, and the timing of it all. And that formal control, necessary somehow 🤔

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Keir's avatar

This is an interesting account, Fliss: she’s making short films, in different styles, of every poem in “Flame and Shadow” (the Teasdale collection from which Blue Squills is the opening poem): https://www.instagram.com/thesarateasdaleproject?igsh=MTRiZW03cjJiM3ZjMA==

And here’s the collection nicely formatted online: https://www.theotherpages.org/poems/books/teasdale/flame01.html

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J. S. Absher's avatar

These are quite interesting short films, with the poem as a script for a drama or dramatic monologue. Thank you for the introduction.

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F.F. Teague (Fliss)'s avatar

Sorry, Keir; I've only just seen this 🥴

I'm not on Instagram, I'm afraid; still working full time and struggling to keep up with things! Thanks very much for the collection, though. I'll probably suggest to John Isbell that we feature Sara Teasdale on our little metrical poetry showcase during the months ahead. Hope all is well with you ☺️

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Keir's avatar

She has a few of them on YouTube (and all 60 thus far on Patreon: https://patreon.com/thesarateasdaleproject?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan&utm_content=join_link). This one she decided to animate! https://youtu.be/76W6TgnjdOo?si=R3XQFP0LgkOJKDHm

I'm doing okay, thank you, Fliss - enjoying the weather! I hope Queenie's doing well!

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Beth Impson's avatar

I can hardly bear it . . .

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J. S. Absher's avatar

In part tangential to the poem: "Light-foot April" reminds me of Housman's lines from "With Rue My Heart Is Laden": "By brooks too broad for leaping / The lightfoot boys are laid." Unlike ever-returning spring, we are light of foot only a short while.

In "The Case of Wagner," Nietzsche wrote: “'All that is good is easy, everything divine runs with light feet': this is the first principle of my æsthetics." I've no idea what Nietzsche might have made of Teasdale's poems, but they seem to carry their burden lightly, so that someone might carelessly read them as joyous and unstudied.

Sidenote: It's a little long (five sonnets written in terza rima), but Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" might be a good poem to analyze here. His melodramatic line, "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed," seems all that Teasdale's poem is not.

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Melanie Bettinelli's avatar

I was thinking of Houseman's lightfoot lads as well.

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