Winter Stars (Verson 2)

Sara Teasdale's "Winter Stars" holds one of poetry's most quietly devastating images: the speaker walking alone at night, blood "afire" with youth, yet drawn to the winter stars because they remind her of earlier winters, when she was young and not yet sad. This is Teasdale at her precise, restrained best. Each poem in this collection holds its emotion like a breath, examining love that glows and fades, nature that endures while we do not, and the particular ache of remembering happiness from inside the present tense of its absence. The imagist's discipline serves deep feeling here, every word earned, every image sharp enough to cut. A book to keep close on a winter night, or any night when you want to remember what it felt like to be young.