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:

    O beauty, are you not enough?
    Why am I crying after love?
    —Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)

    However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.
    Graham Greene (1904–1991)

    The glorious dream of full father involvement in infant care will not become a widespread reality overnight. But it can happen, and it eventually will happen,... A lot of progress may take place in a short period of time if we just lighten up, step back, and give the guys a decent chance.
    Michael K. Meyerhoff (20th century)