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:

    Then, like an old-time orator
    Impressively he rose;
    I make the most of all that comes
    And the least of all that goes.
    —Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)

    Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn’t had an audience, and lines to speak?
    Jean Genet (1910–1986)

    Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? You never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud, and what changes a darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things—what eternity is, for example—I wouldn’t care if they did think I was crazy.
    Garrett Fort (1900–1945)