Much-maligned, succint and direct poems like this sunny lyric reveal a poet due a reassessment
Sara Teasdale was one of the few American women poets who aroused not the slightest "anxiety of influence" in the ambitious young Sylvia Plath. In one of her letters home, Plath congratulated herself on not "quailing and whining like Teasdale". This dismissal may not amount simply to a literary judgment: Teasdale had committed suicide in 1933, at the age of 48, and Plath was already uneasy about the connection she'd detected between women writers and suicide. Germaine Greer, tackling the same uncomfortable theme in her controversial 1995 monograph on women poets, Slipshod Sybils, comments that, in the end, Teasdale had "no other subject than her own longings and disappointments."
It was a sad finale. Teasdale in her prime had been a popular and acclaimed writer. She was very much a poet of mood, and her style was simple, lyrical and succinct. Her range of ideas was limited, but at best she could evoke some key moment in a personal relationship in a sharp, revealing way. City and countryside alike are sketched in with a skilful hand, and she certainly didn't sing the blues all the time. Her earlier books contain many delighted, even ecstatic, love poems. This week's choice, "Redbirds", looks back without self-pity to youthful happiness and a particularly special day in May.
To its credit, the poem doesn't divulge why the day was so wonderful. Teasdale keeps her eye precisely focused on the countryside of her St Louis birthplace. There's even a twinkle of wistful humour. Those migrant finches, the redbirds, are certainly handsome, but their song, apparently, consists of "chicky chucky chuck". I'm sure Teasdale is perfectly aware of this, and that the "honey-call" is a knowing allusion to the way ordinary sights and sounds are transformed by happiness (there are other poems on this very theme) and, of course, by what they symbolise. The redbirds would have arrived with the hot weather ? and they didn't stay for long.
All the proper names in the beginning are evocative, appealing to eye and ear alike. Redbirds, redbuds, buckberry ? the repeated Bs bubble like water. The Mississippi is probably the river in the poem, perhaps near its confluence with the Missouri, where the wooded limestone bluffs can rise to a height of 40ft. Teasdale's palette is unexpected, its colours more usually associated with autumn. English poetry celebrates May with images of shining grass and delicately coloured wild-flowers: this American eye gives us refreshing splashes of red, brown and gold. At the same time, Teasdale's ear remembers the English folk tradition in the repetitive opening lines, with a hint of fairytale magic in "long and long ago", and the delicate irregularities of metre in verse three.
The weight of the poem finally seems to rest on the place-name, Saxton's Hill, redolent of memories both public and personal. Rufus Saxton was a heroic Union Army brigadier-general so perhaps another shade of red is hinted here: the bloodshed of the Civil War. The place-name has to carry it all, without any intrusion from the poet, and this potent, low-key conclusion is the poem's master-stroke. Rather than follow a spiral into self-pity, Teasdale's imagination has expanded to a larger view of things. The last rhetorical question acknowledges continuity. Of course there are still redbirds and lovers on Saxton's Hill.
On the strength of poems like this, Teasdale deserves a reassessment. A selection of her best lyrics would surely still be capable of pleasing readers. We all, at times, like a poem to hold up a mirror to our moody selves, whether we're alight with the joys of spring or singing those old St Louis blues.
Redbirds
Redbirds, redbirds,
Long and long ago,
What a honey-call you had
In hills I used to know;
Redbud, buckberry,
Wild plum-tree
And proud river sweeping
Southward to the sea,
Brown and gold in the sun
Sparkling far below,
Trailing stately round her bluffs
Where the poplars grow -
Redbirds, redbirds,
Are you singing still
As you sang one May day
On Saxton's Hill?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/may/02/poem-of-the-week-sara-teasdale
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