Funny Friendship Poems

Let a Poem Capture You: a Review of "The Collected Poems" by Sara Teasdale
By Lisa Koosis

It's one of those books that just looks literary, with its unjacketed cranberry-colored cover imprinted in silver. There is no cover art, no jacket copy, no bold proclamations of the book's greatness. It simply reads: "The Collected Poems" and then Sara Teasdale. It's a book for book lovers.

I've loved Sara Teasdale -- or at least her poetry -- since I was in junior high school. I was in the seventh grade, and my English class was studying poetry. Being an aspiring writer even then, I, of course, liked poetry, but I had never really gotten the poetry bug. At least not until I was introduced to Sara Teasdale.

The poem we read, which is included in this marvelous collection, was "There Will Come Soft Rains." In a verse, in the span of a heartbeat, of a poem's beat, I was captured. Though I was never much for rhyming couplets, I was captured. The art of poetry had ensnared me.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" has been my favorite poem ever since, and like any good piece of literature, its meaning has changed for me many times as my life has changed, as I have grown into adulthood.

In popularity, Sara Teasdale is no Emily Dickinson. She is no Sylvia Plath, no Maya Angelou, no William Shakespeare. Many people have never even heard of her, but she is a wonderful poet nonetheless.