when poets collide

when poets collide

sara teasdale

met edna st. vincent millay

near the front desk

of the martha washington hotel

in new york city

in february 1913.

they had tea and hit it off,

later cruising 5th avenue on the top of a bus.

sara was established,

vincent had just won acclaim for “Renascence,”

and yet though sara was eight years older

they were both in their twenties.

later vincent wrote her mom

that “I call her Sara and she me Vincent”

and “. . . I love her . . .”

and quoted these teasdale lines:

“I hoped that he would love me,/And he has kissed my mouth,/But I am like a stricken bird/That cannot reach the south/For tho’ I know he loves me/Tonight my heart is sad,/His kiss was not so wonderful/As all the dreams I had.”

and sometime near the end of 1917

vincent wrote “First Fig”

which contained what her sister norma said

was “surely the most quoted and mis-quoted quatrain in America”:

“My candle burns at both ends;/It will not last the night;/But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—/It gives a lovely light!”

the meter and rhyme

are strikingly similar to teasdale’s

and so these lines of mine humbly suggest

that the one would not exist without the other.