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Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems

Edited by Edward Hirsch

“In his brilliant introduction, Edward Hirsch calls the Selected Poems a ‘spiritual autobiography,’ and as we chart Roethke’s development, we share in those moments of sublime ecstasy when boundaries between the self and the natural world momentarily dissolve and the poet reaches ‘the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.’ ”—The Missouri Review

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

From the recollections of his youth in Michigan to the visionary longings of the poems written just before his death, Theodore Roethke embarked on a quest to restore wholeness to a self that seemed irreparably broken. In the words of editor Edward Hirsch, “he courted the irrational and embraced what is most vulnerable in life.”

Hirsch’s selection and perceptive introduction illuminate the daring and intensity of a poet who, in poems such as “My Papa’s Waltz” and “The Lost Son,” reached back into the abyss of childhood in an attempt to wrest self-knowledge out of memory. Roethke’s true subject was the unfathomable depths of his own being, but his existential investigations were always shaped and disciplined by an exacting formal stringency, as equally at ease with Yeats’ vigorous cadence (“Four for Sir John Davies”) as with the spacious Whitmanian idiom on display in the virtuoso efforts of The Far Field. This gathering of Roethke’s works also includes several of his poems for children, and a generous sampling from his notebook writings, offering a glimpse of the poet at work with the raw materials of language and ideas.

Edward Hirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism, including Lay Back the Darkness and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. His many awards include a National Book Critics Circle award and a MacArthur fellowship. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

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Table of Contents

Introduction by Edward Hirsch

from Open House (1941)
Open House
The Premonition
Mid-Country Blow
The Heron
The Bat
“Long Live the Weeds”
On the Road to Woodlawn
Highway: Michigan
Night Journey

from The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Cuttings
Cuttings (later)
Root Cellar
Forcing House
Weed Puller
Orchids
Moss-Gathering
Big Wind
Old Florist
Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze
Transplanting
Child on Top of a Greenhouse
Flower Dump
Carnations
My Papa’s Waltz
Pickle Belt
Dolor
Double Feature
The Return
Night Crow
River Incident
The Minimal
The Waking
The Lost Son
The Long Alley
A Field of Light
The Shape of the Fire

from Praise to the End! (1951)
Where Knock Is Open Wide
I Need, I Need
Praise to the End!
Unfold! Unfold!
I Cry, Love! Love!

from The Waking (1953)
O, Thou Opening, O
A Light Breather
Elegy for Jane
from Four for Sir John Davies: The Dance
The Waking

from Words for the Wind (1958)
Words for the Wind
I Knew a Woman
The Sententious Man
The Pure Fury
The Surly One
The Beast
A Walk in Late Summer
Snake
Slug
from Meditations of an Old Woman: First Meditation

from The Far Field (1964)
North American Sequence
     The Longing
     Meditation at Oyster River
     Journey to the Interior
     The Long Waters
     The Far Field
     The Rose
Elegy
Otto
The Meadow Mouse
Heard in a Violent Ward
The Geranium
The Storm
The Thing
from Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical
     In a Dark Time
     The Sequel
     The Right Thing

Poems for Children
Dinky
The Cow
The Serpent
The Sloth
The Lady and the Bear
The Kitty-Cat Bird
The Whale
The Yak
The Donkey
The Hippo
The Lamb
The Lizard

Excerpts from the Notebooks

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ISBN: 978-1-931082-78-5 183 pages

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