Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) was a poet of sensibility, in the early-19th-century sense of that word. As Jane Austen uses it in “Sense and Sensibility” to define the character of Marianne Dashwood, the word means the opposite of sensible. We would say sensitivity, or perhaps even hyper-sensitivity. Yet in Teasdale, that hyper-sensitivity becomes a way of apprehending reality, a way of perceiving and knowing. In such poems as “Blue Squills,” for example, Teasdale’s speaker is an exposed nerve, feeling whatever she feels to the point of pain. Even beauty inflicts itself on her, as an icy milkshake on a hot day causes a headache. Most of the time, in her poems, this exquisite juxtaposition of exaltation with pain occurs within the strict boundaries of poetic form. Rhyme and meter contain the excesses of feeling, shaping them into art. Although her poems often appear simple and controlled as a child’s nursery rhymes, her gift lay in her capacity for communicating mystery, trouble, some intensity of experience, beneath those polished surfaces. Today’s poem, though unrhymed and irregularly metered, still constructs, with meticulous artifice, an experience in which joy reaches a climax, then exceeds itself. Though its lines vary in length from dimeter to tetrameter, they most often resolve into an insistent trimeter which, as it repeats, echoes the strokes of the skaters on the ice, the footsteps of the lovers who walk out of their own blue shadows on this brilliant, frozen day. Repetition, that driving force we recognize from the Psalms, heightens the sense of ecstasy with each invocation of the word ecstasy, until it seems that ecstasy is what the world is made of. “Had not the music of our joy / Sounded its highest note?” the speaker asks. It seems a rhetorical question. “But no!” Just when you think you’re feeling as much joy as you can bear, there’s more. Just when you think that life has sung its highest note, a bird — a flash of blue on a branch — takes the whole thing up an octave. In that instant the whole world proves itself as larger, more infinite in its promises, than it had seemed before. A Winter Blue Jay by Sara Teasdale Crisply the bright snow whispered, Crunching beneath our feet; Behind us as we walked along the parkway, Our shadows danced, Fantastic shapes in vivid blue. Across the lake the skaters Flew to and fro, With sharp turns weaving A frail invisible net. In ecstasy the earth Drank the silver sunlight; In ecstasy the skaters Drank the wine of speed; In ecstasy we laughed Drinking the wine of love. Had not the music of our joy Sounded its highest note? But no, For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said, “Oh look!” There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, Fearless and gay as our love, A bluejay cocked his crest! Oh who can tell the range of joy Or set the bounds of beauty? ___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
