Sara Teasdale - Teasdale's Suicide and "I Shall Not Care"

Teasdale's Suicide and "I Shall Not Care"

A common urban legend surrounds Teasdale's suicide. The legend claims that her poem "I Shall Not Care" (which features themes of abandonment, bitterness, and contemplation of death) was penned as a suicide note to a former lover. However, the poem was actually first published in her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea, a full 18 years before her suicide:

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Famous quotes containing the words teasdale, suicide and/or care:

    As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
    In a long forgotten snow.
    —Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)

    They can rule the world while they can persuade us
    our pain belongs in some order.
    Is death by famine worse than death by suicide,
    than a life of famine and suicide ... ?
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man’s limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)