“How autocratic our country is becoming”: The Sentimental Poetess at War

Sara Teasdale has long been known as a quintessential “poetess”: demure, genteel, and decidedly un-modern. This essay analyzes a selection of her uncollected and unpublished poems, produced between 1915 and 1918, in which the poet responds critically to World War I. Throughout these poems, as well as her correspondence from this same era, Teasdale lodges a sharp critique of America’s heightened nationalism and increasing militarization. Alongside this radical politics, Teasdale also experiments with the aesthetic conventions of nineteenth-century sentimentality. Her innovative use of ancient forms, such as the pastoral and the Sapphic stanza, models a powerful collision between the past and the present, and pushes toward a modernist aesthetics. This essay challenges Teasdale’s reputation as a sentimental “poetess,” and explores the complex reasons why critics have been unable to see this important body of political poetry.