Flame and Shadow

<p><I>Flame and Shadow</I> (1920) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's fifth collection published two years after she won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life death and the natural world. Somber and celebratory symbolic and grounded in experience <I>Flame and Shadow</I> revels in the mystery of existence itself. What do I care in the dreams and the languor of spring / That my songs do not show me at all? Content to depict the rhythms of nature the songs of birds and the silver light after a storm Teasdale's poetry dissolves the poet's ego in order to access a deeper well of creative energy: For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent / It is my heart that makes my songs not I. In There Will Come Soft Rains a poem born from a decade of war and widespread disease Teasdale imagines a posthuman world where beauty and harmony continue despite our disappearance: Robins will wear their feathery fire / Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war... For Teasdale a poet who merges an abiding affection for flora and fauna with a critical distance from human affairs the belief in the life of the world with or without us is enough. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript this edition of Sara Teasdale's <I>Flame and Shadow</I> is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.</p>