Faces by Sara Teasdale - Poetry: The Best Words in the Best Order - #BlogchatterA2ZChallenge2021
FACES
Sara Teasdale
People that I meet and pass
In the city's broken roar
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before.
Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?
Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places -
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.
-People in the restless street
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?
The Poet: Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)
Sara Teasdale was an American poet born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. Her poetry echoed the developments in her own life, as she grew from a sheltered young woman who wrote lyrical poems on love, beauty and death, to a more fragile and restless stage which affected her poetic sensibilities accordingly. She was not accorded much recognition during her lifetime, even though she won the first Columbia Prize for Poetry in 1918, a prize which is now known as the Pulitzer. Critics dismissed her poetry as unsophisticated, but musical.
In 1933, legend goes that, depressed and disillusioned, Sara wrote a poem titled 'I Shall Not Care', a poem that featured her issues with frustration, abandonment and thoughts about death, and one that preceded her tragic suicide in 1933.
'Faces' is a poem that is outwardly simple, but hides thoughts "often too deep for tears' (Wordsworth). As she walks along the street, she notices the people passing by "in the city's broken roar'. The word 'roar' points to the outward appearance of the city that exudes strength and robustness. However, the adjective 'broken' negates this image, as it refers to the weariness and the challenges faced by the people living in the city.
The poet finds herself sorrowful that she is able to pierce through the facades and disguises that passers-by hide beneath as they walk by her. They hide silent secrets that come rushing out from sanctuaries, laying themselves bare to the eyes of the world.
The poet's melancholy grows at the sight of the sorrow on the countenances of the people. The restless streets actually mean the restless lives of the people who walk hurriedly on them. The poem ends with the poet asking a rhetoric question.
"Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?"
Are her secrets as easily apparent to others as well?
"How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?"
How strange it is to read these lines which talk of a 'poor disguise' at a time like this when people across the world are walking around with masks on their faces to guard themselves against the Corona virus!
Loved both the poems... The first poem leaves me thinking, if only we could all pierce through the facades.... Second poem is so haunting! Loved your analysis... Yeah it is indeed so relatable during corona times.
ReplyDelete'Haunting' is the right word, indeed, Ira! If only we could pierce through the facades. However, someone rightly said once the the two saddest words in the English language are "If only!" So true, isn't it?
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