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29 Jan 2025


K Roberts

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New
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Feb 12th

Jan 13th

The Gilded Age

After poet Sara Teasdale’s style,

and the novels of Edith Wharton

A samovar of coffee or of tea

a napkin folded just so on her lap

the arbour afternoon’s a freckled green

the caged canary, languid tabby cat

await her lifted hand, soft-spoken word

and pouring of rich order, recompense

for hours whiled away unseen, unheard

in the reliquary of her innocence.


An entourage attends her in Manhattan

and follows her upstate to summer homes

their vests and gloves are lined in daffodil satin

their ivory buttons match her ivory combs

they know her cosseted life is happenstance

and the price of their proximity is feigned indifference.

Behind the poem...

Sara Teasdale’s poetry has an effortless, weightless quality that contrasts with the seriousness of her subject matter. Her poems are imbued with a sense of breath – they seem designed to be read aloud. Despite Sara’s comfortable childhood and formidable talent, her adult life was unhappy. She experienced painful divorce and physical disability. Choosing not to write about her circumstances, I took instead the broader topic of the era into which she was born. My poem’s subjects are the unseen members of wealthy households; servants for whom success is resilience, self-denial, rather than self-expression.

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© 2025 Original Authors

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