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Barter by Sara Teasdale
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Barter by Sara Teasdale
I Shall Not Care
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
Barter
Lyric Poetry
- Typically express personal (often emotional) feelings.
- Traditionally spoken in the present tense.
- Modern examples often have specific rhyming schemes.
A common urban legend around Teasdale's suicide claims that her poem "I Shall Not Care" (which features themes of abandonment, bitterness, and contemplation of death) was written as a suicide note to a former lover.
However, the poem was actually first published a full 18 years before her suicide.
Read through the poem and identify Teasdale's use of the following:
Form - refrain; rhyme scheme
Metaphor
Alliteration
Personification
Simile
Speaker
Tone
Imagery
Themes
- American Lyric Poet
- Poor health as a child; started school at age 14.
- Published her first poem in a local newspaper, as well as her first collection of poems, at 19.
- Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1918 for her 1917 poetry collection "Love Songs".
- Married in 1914, but her husband's constant business travel caused her much loneliness.
- Obtained a divorce in 1929.
- Died by suicide in 1933 at age 48, overdosing on sleeping pills.
- Buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetary in St. Louis, Missouri.
I Shall Not Care
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.