Sara Trevor Teasdale

Sara Trevor Teasdale was born on August 8, 1884 in St. Louis Missouri. She was the youngest child of Mary Elizabeth Willard and John Warren Teasdale. At the time of Sara's birth, Mary was 40, and John was 45. Teasdale had three other siblings. She had two brothers, George, who was the oldest child at 20, and John Warren Jr., was was 14. Teasdale also had a sister, named Mary (she was fondly called "Maime"), and she was 17. Mary loved her sister Sara and took very good care of her. Sara was named after her grandmother. Teasdale's first word was "pretty". According to her mother, Sara's love of pretty things was what inspired her poetry. Teasdale was always very frail, and caught diseases easily. For most of her life, she had a nurse companion that took care of her. Teasdale grew up in a sheltered atmosphere. She was the youngest child. Because of that, she was spoiled and waited on like a princess. She never had to do normal chores, like make her bed, or do the dishes. She was known to have described herself as "a flower in a toiling world". Because she was so sickly, she was homeschooled until she was nine. She never had communication with her peers. Teasdale grew up around adults. She was forced to amuse heself with stories and things that she made up in her own lonesome world. When Teasdale was ten, she had the first communication with her peers. Her parents sent her to Miss Ellen Dean Lockwood's school for boys and girls. When she was fourteen, she went to Mary Institute. She didn't graduate there, but switched to Hosmer Hall when she was fifteen. There, she began to put the thoughts and dreams that amused her as a girl onto paper. Thus, she wrote her first poem. Teasdale's first published poem was "Reedy's Mirror", and it was published in a local newspaper. Her first collection, "Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems", was published in 1907. In 1911, her second collection, "Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems" was published. She published many other collections including "Rivers to the Sea", "Love Songs", "Flame and Shadow", "Dark of the Moon", "Stars To-night", and finally, "Strange Victory". Teasdale married her sweetheart Ernst Filsinger in 1914. They had a happy marriage, but it was too good to last. They divorced in 1929, and lived the rest of her life only for her poetry. Sara was always frail and sickly, but in 1933, Teasdale caught chronic pneumonia and it weakened her not only in body but also in mind and spirit. No longer able to see the beauty in simple things, Teasdale committed suicide at age 48 in New York, NY on January 29, 1933. Her final book of poetry was published that year. Teasdale's works continue to be admired by poets everywhere. her works show us what a lovely person she was, and how much she appreciated the beautiful things about life. Her love for beautiful things appeared in her poetry. She was a very talented poet, and we are glad she shared her talent with us.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow. Her father, Ivan Tsvetayev, was a professor of art history and the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her mother Mariya, née Meyn, was a talented concert pianist. The family travelled a great deal and Tsvetaeva attended schools in Switzerland, Germany, and at the Sorbonne, Paris. Tsvetaeva started to write verse in her early childhood. She made her debut as a poet at the age of 18 with the collection Evening Album, a tribute to her childhood. In 1912 Tsvetaeva married Sergei Efron, they had two daughters and one son. Magic Lantern showed her technical mastery and was followed in 1913 by a selection of poems from her first collections. Tsvetaeva's affair with the poet and opera librettist Sofiia Parnok inspired her cycle of poems called Girlfriend. Parnok's career stopped in the late 1920s when she was no longer allowed to publish. The poems composed between 1917 and 1921 appeared in 1957 under the title The Demesne of the Swans. Inspired by her relationship with Konstantin Rodzevich, an ex-Red Army officer she wrote Poem of the Mountain and Poem of the End. After 1917 Revolution Tsvetaeva was trapped in Moscow for five years. During the famine one of her own daughters died of starvation. Tsvetaeva's poetry reveal her growing interest in folk song and the techniques of the major symbolist and poets, such as Aleksander Blok and Anna Akhmatova. In 1922 Tsvetaeva emigrated with her family to Berlin, where she rejoined her husband, and then to Prague. This was a highly productive period in her life - she published five collections of verse and a number of narrative poems, plays, and essays. During her years in Paris Tsvetaeva wrote two parts of the planned dramatic trilogy. The last collection published during her lifetime, After Russia, appeared in 1928. Its print, 100 numbered copies, were sold by special subscription. In Paris the family lived in poverty, the income came almost entirely from Tsvetaeva's writings. When her husband started to work for the Soviet security service, the Russian community of Paris turned against Tsvetaeva. Her limited publishing ways for poetry were blocked and she turned to prose. In 1937 appeared MOY PUSHKIN, one of Tsvetaeva's best prose works. To earn extra income, she also produced short stories, memoirs and critical articles. In exile Tsvetaeva felt more and more isolated. Friendless and almost destitute she returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, where her son and husband already lived. Next year her husband was executed and her daughter was sent to a labor camp. Tsvetaeva was officially ostracized and unable to publish. After the USSR was invaded by German Army in 1941, Tsvetaeva was evacuated to the small provincial town of Elabuga with her son. In despair, she hanged herself ten days later on August 31, 1941.

Anne Sexton

Anne Gray Harvey was born November 9, 1928 in Weston, Mass. to Mary Gray Staples Harvey and Ralph Churchill Harvey. The youngest of three sisters, Anne was the baby of the family, always craving attention and loving to be held. Growing up, Anne saw her eldest sister, Jane, become Daddy's girl, while her other sister Blanche, became reknown as the smart one of the three, loving to read and the only one to go to college. Her parents moving to Wellesley, Mass., Anne attended public schools from the time she was 6 until she was 17. At the age of 17, her parents sent her off to Rogers Hall, a preparatory school for girls, in Lowell, Mass.; hoping to 'cure' her of her wild nature and shape her into a proper woman. It was here that Anne first began to write poetry, which was published in the school yearbook. Yet shortly after beginning the call she had, her mother, who had come from a family of writers, accused Anne of plagiarism, disbelieving that her daughter could posess the talent to write such lovely poetry. Continuing on with the refinement of her womanhood, Anne attended the Garland School in Boston, a finishing school for women. It was here that she met and eloped with Alfred Muller Sexton II, whom everbody called Kayo. Kayo and Anne moved to Hamilton, New York, where Kayo was attending Colgate, University. Unable to afford making a living and supporting a wife, Kayo decided that they should move back to Massachusetts. Upon moving back, Anne enrolled in a modeling class at the Hart Agency, completing the course and going on to model for the agency for a short period of time. Meanwhile, Kayo had joined the naval reserve and had been shipped out on the USS Boxer to Korea. In 1952, Kayo came home for a year after the Boxer received war damage. It was during this time that Anne and Kayo conceived their first child. In July 1953, shortly after Kayo had been shipped out again, Anne gave birth to Linda Gray Sexton. Later that year Kayo was discharged and he returned home where he and Anne purchased a home in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, not far from either of their parents.
In 1954, Anne began struggling with recurring depression and began seeking counseling. During the time of her counseling she and Kayo gave birth to their second child, Joyce Ladd Sexton, whom they nicknamed Joy. Beginning in 1956, Annes mental condition worstened, leading up to her first psychiatric hospitalization and her first suicide attempt. In December of that year, under the guidance of her psychiatrist, Dr. Martin, she resumed writing poetry. Finding therapeutic value in her writing, she enrolled in John Holme's poetry workshop, where she met Maxine Kumin. Yet falling, once again into a deep depression, Anne attempted suicide again in May, 1957. Again hospitalized, she continued to write poetry and in August received a scholarship to Antioch Writers' Conference, where she met W. D. Snodgrass. In 1958, Anne enrolled in Robert Lowell's graduate writing seminar at Boston University, where she met Sylvia Plath and George Starbuck. In 1959, she was awarded the Audience Poetry Prize. With this award Anne began work to publish the first of her books of poetry entitled To Bedlam and Part Way Back. The publisment of this book spurred Anne to keep writing and led to national recognition of her work. Following her first book, Anne published her second book,in 1962, entitled All My Pretty Ones. Following the release of this work, Anne continued her success by working on four children's books with her longtime friend Maxine Kumin. During the span of August 22 to October 27, 1963, Anne toured Europe on a travelling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Despite enjoying the trip, Anne returned a month early due to an emotional disturbance. Nineteen sixty-four proved to be an interesting year in Anne's clinical life as her longtime psychiatrist moved his practice to Philadelphia, and she began seeing a new psychiatrist who started Anne on the drug, Thorazine, to control her on going depression and hospitalizatizations. In 1965, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. Following this award she published her Pulitzer-prize winning book entitled Live or Die, in 1966. Continuing writing and teaching English literature at Wayland, Mass. High School, in June 1968 Anne was awarded honorary Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard becoming the first woman ever to join the 187-year-old chapter. Beginning in 1969, Anne published her book entitled Love Poems, following this book she continued work on her play Mercy Street until the fall where she began teaching a poetry seminar at Boston University. The success of her seminar led to her appointment as a lecturer at Boston University,in 1970 and her eventual award of full professorship, in 1972.
Despite her success as a writer, poet, and playwright, Anne's personal life took a sudden plunge in 1973, where she was hospitalized three times and received a divorce from her husband during the course of the year. Surviving much of the following year, Anne managed to bring her final works to a conclusion with the publishment of The Death Notebooks, a completed final editing of The Awful Rowing Toward God, and a tentative arrangement of poems in 45 Mercy Street. The conclusiveness of the works seemed to Anne to be a proper stopping point. Following her last poetry reading at Goucher College in Maryland on October 3, 1974, Anne returned home to commit suicide in her garage on October 4, 1974 by way of carbon monoxide poisoning. The tragic end she brought to her life was the result of several years of battling depression and dissatisfaction with her place in life. Despite this truth, she carved a place in the minds and hearts of the American literary world forever.
In recent days, the release of Diane Wood Middlebrook's biography of Anne Sexton's life has caused controversy in the circles of certain groups of psychiatrists and moralists. The controversy centers around Middlebrook's decision to include within her biography, excerpts from tapes recorded during Anne's therapy sessions. The tapes were released to Middlebrook under the strict permission of Anne's daughter, Linda Gray Sexton who authorized Middlebrook to utilize all resources that she had to construct a thourough biography of Anne's life. Though the controversy is real to many, the question of doctor-patient confidentiality has done little to hurt the success of the biography in the eyes of the general public