Theodore Roethke was born on May 25, 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan to Otto Roethke, a German immigrant who owned a local greenhouse along with his brother, Theodore’s uncle. Roethke spent many hours as a child playing in and around this greenhouse, which greatly influenced his poetry. Roethke’s adolescence was greatly disrupted when at the age of 15, his uncle committed suicide and his father died of cancer only a few months apart. While this is not known, I believe this was the impetus for his numerous bouts with depression and alcoholism, both of which appeared much later in his life.
Roethke attended the University of Michigan and before he could obtain a graduate degree from Harvard, dropped out to become a teacher because of the great depression. It was while teaching at Michigan State University that he first experienced depression; however, this helped advance his poetry.
Roethke’s first book, Open House, was published in 1941, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize as well as two National Book Awards. Roethke’s last teaching job was at the University of Washington, where he established a reputation as a crazy, but brilliant professor. Roethke suffered a heart attack and died in a friend’s swimming pool at age 55 in 1963. The pool has since been turned into a Zen rock garden.
It'll be interesting to see what his past has influenced into his writing.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.poemhunter.com/poem/open-house-2/
ReplyDeleteThis is a poem that I think really shows that influence.
-DPS
hmm, yes. Here it is for ease of reference:
ReplyDeleteit's interesting to see the tension he creates between the lilting, musical meter and the agonies he is describing. I have followed this comment with two more that Roethke is known for.
Open House
My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.
My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I’m naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.
The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth:
Rage warps my clearest cry
To witless agony.
************
Here is an example of how deep knowledge of technical language can inform a poet's work. Roethke worte many poems based on his experience growing up around plants. A forcing house is a greenhouse or any environment with high temperatures to force plants to mature quickly, which maybe is how Roethke felt about his childhood:
ReplyDeleteFORCING HOUSE
By Theodore Roethke
Vines tougher than wrists
And rubbery shoots,
Scums, mildews, smuts along stems,
Great cannas or delicate cyclamen tips, –
All pulse with the knocking pipes
That drip and sweat,
Sweat and drip,
Swelling the roots with steam and stench,
Shooting up lime and dung and ground bones, –
Fifty summers in motion at once,
As the live heat billows from pipes and pots.
Perhaps one of Roethke's most famous poems is "My Papa's Waltz," which shows an ambiguous picture of a little boy being danced too harshly by his drunk father; and implies that there are possible beatings in the house, hence making "my papa's waltz" a frightening metaphor for something more menacing:
MY PAPA'S WALTZ
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
(i guess you can tell i really love Roethke, huh?)
Events to celebrate Theodore Roethke's birthday here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mlive.com/entertainment/saginaw/index.ssf/2011/05/celebrate_roethke_heres_the_ru.html