Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
"I think of myself as a poet of love, a poet of praise, and I wish to be read aloud." [1]
Theodore Roethke was born May 25, 1908 in Saginaw, Ohio. His father and his father's brother owned a large nursery business that included 250,000 square feet of greenhouses. [2] Roethke wrote that the greenhouses were "...my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth." [3] Growing up around the nurseries, Roethke began observing nature. He refers to these studies from his childhood in his poetry by sometimes creating anthropomorphic images of nature like the following from Orchids and Root Cellar:
Orchids*:
"Soft luminescent fingers,
Lips neither dead nor alive,
Loose ghostly mouths
Breathing,"
Root Cellar:
"Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark...."
Roethke's early life was impressed by tragedy. The nursery business was sold in 1922 after a family feud, then before he turned 15 in 1923, Roethke's uncle shot himself, and his father died of cancer. [4]
Schoolmate and biographer Allan Seager described Roethke as a sensitive boy. [5] Linda Robinson Walker writes that Roethke was an outcast and began drinking in High School. She says he liked to project himself wearing the mask of a "tough talking gangster intimate with criminals." [6]
Roethke earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Michigan. He spent time at a law school and Harvard University. [7]
After being released from a hospital in the spring of 1936, Roethke returned to Saginaw to recuperate after a mental breakdown he suffered the previous fall. It was the first of several he would experience during his life. [8]
Theodore Roethke's teaching assignments included Pennsylvania State University and Lafayette College. [9] In a 1949 interview, he said his objective in teaching poetry was "help[ing] a student recover the creative instinct lost sometime in childhood." [10]
Roethke married in 1953. He died while visiting a friend on August 1, 1963.
James Carew July 23, 2011
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Text of Poems
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In a Dark Time
gawow.com/roethke/poems/231.html
Root Cellar [*full text of Orchids can be found here too.]
www.washington.edu/research/sh...
Night Crow
adilegian.com/roethke.htm
The Far Field
gawow.com/roethke/poems/193.html
Weed Puller
www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/5...
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References & Notes
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[1] From Wall Street Journal obituary as cited by Linda Robinson Walker , Theodore Roethke Michigan's Poet michigantoday.umich.edu/01/Sum...
[2] Linda Robinson Walker , Theodore Roethke Michigan's Poet michigantoday.umich.edu/01/Sum...
[3]Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, Robert O'Clair, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, W.W. Norton & Co. New York, page 841
[4] [5] [6] Walker
[7] Wikipedia, Theodore Roethke, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore...
[8] Walker
[9] Wikipedia
[10} Walker