Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke

by Theodore Roethke

Book by Roethke, Theodore

Genres: Poetry, Literature, American, Nonfiction, Classics

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

American poet Theodore Roethke published short lyrical works in The Waking (1953) and other collections.

Rhythm and natural imagery characterized volumes of Theodore Huebner Roethke. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking. Roethke wrote of his poetry: The greenhouse "is my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth." From childhood experiences of working in floral company of his family in Saginaw, Roethke drew inspiration. Beginning is 1941 with Open House, the distinguished poet and teacher published extensively; he received two National Book Awards among an array of honors. In 1959, Yale University awarded him the prestigious Bollingen Prize. Roethke taught at Michigan State College, (present-day Michigan State University) and at colleges in Pennsylvania and Vermont before joining the faculty of the University of Washington at Seattle in 1947.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm originally from Pennsylvania, but then I got married and moved to Indiana. And even though Roethke was born in Michigan, I think of him as a Pennsylvania man since he taught at Penn State, and Lafayette College.

And then, I was visiting Pennsylvania and walked into a little used bookstore in Lewisburg, (home of Bucknell University), and saw this book. It was put out by Indiana University Press. And I thought, I'm a Pennsylvania guy who's moved to Indiana and is back visiting Pennsylvania seeing this book of a Pennsylvanian poet printed in Indiana but transferred back to Pennsylvania. ...It was a sign. I had to buy it and take it back to Indiana.

Congrats if you could follow all that. ...I'm no poet.

Of course, I was a huge fan of My Papa's Waltz. It's still a poem I think of as often as I think of any poem. (If you're reading this review, there's probably no way you haven't read My Papa's Waltz... But IF you haven't, skip the rest of this review and go read that poem right now. And ask yourself whether the poem is happy or sad, whether it's about abuse or love. And ask yourself a dozen other questions that are asked about that poem when studying poetry. Just don't ask so many questions that you end up hating the poem. (I can't imagine that happening. It's wonderful.)

As with many books of poetry that I read, I put this one down for a while, then came back to it. There for a bit in the middle, I thought I may only give it two stars. But several poems and lines from the ending section, "Meditations of an Old Woman" bolstered it right back up.

"Loved heart, what can I say?
When I was a lark, I sang;
When I was a worm, I devoured.

The self says, I am;
The heart says, I am less;
The spirit says, you are nothing."

...Or this one, which I put up this morning as my quote of the day/week/however long it takes for me to get around to putting the next one up there:

"So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition."

...I'm sure my students feel that way sometimes.

And famously:

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow."

And both the rhyme and meter here:

"Was I the servant of a sovereign wish,
Or ladle rattling in an empty dish."

Of course, there are many other quotes I could and should get to, but DAMN: I must include this: I don't know whose book I got, but it's filled with gorgeous handwritten notes. Little tidbits that add to the reading. Nuggets that may someday be lost. I'll give a couple to you here and now:



The cursive on this one says, "This poem is sharp in its personal disclosure and might justifiably serve as a motto for all Roetke's subsequent verse.



(1) While emphasis on nature is still maintained, attention has now moved away from the earlier images of natural and seasonal activity in the larger sense to a reduced microscopic scrutiny of plant life that seems almost scientific in its precision but is obviously prompted by the poet's intuition, passion, and sympathy.

(2) The disturbing quality in these poems results from the dramatic re-creation of affinities with lower orders of life, parallels we have banished(?) from thought.



1. The poems in this section are a sequence of internal monologues.

2. The poems treat portions of a spiritual journey under-taken by a child-protagonist, a journey the narrative of which does not develop in a direct, logical manner because it is viewed internally through the fluid movements and reactions of the protagonist's mind.



(above) The poet presents himself in the act of watching.

(below) In the poet's attentive gaze this tiny world increases it's size and comes curiously near...



(And my favorite): (above) Three old women who worked in Roethke's father's floral ______

(below) He captures the beauty + pleasure of the women at their task.

[Mehmet]

"Her şey bir dağılış
Bir parlayıştır" (s.150)

Geçtiğimiz günlerde bir tanıdığın yazdığı kitaba, ortak bir arkadaşımız verdiğim puanı görmüş. Üç yıldız vermişim bir sebepten. İşin kötü tarafı neden üç yıldız verdiğimi de hatırlayamadım. Bir şeyler düşündüm ama... Aklıma da pek bir şey gelmedi açıkçası. Muhtemelen okuma sırası kriterim nedeniyle 3 yıldız vermişim. Okuduktan sonra geçen zaman, kitaplara yönelik değerlendirmeleri muğlaklaştırıyor. Bu nedenle aldığım karar neticesinde çok bariz sebeplerle düşük ve yüksek puan verdiklerim haricindeki tüm puanlamalarımı silmeye karar verdim. Pek tabii, değerlendirmelerim kalıyor.

Bu kitaba gelince, psikolojik derinliği olan bir kitap. Şiirlerin her biri hem felsefi bir boyuta sahip hem de insan psikolojisinin dehlizlerinden besleniyor.

Yine yakın zamanda bir goodreads arkadaşım bana şiir kitaplarını şiir tekniği ve sanat akımları bağlamında değerlendirmekten bahsetmişti. Ben bundan imtina ediyorum. Her şeyden evvel ben bir edebiyat tarihçisi veya kuramcısı değilim. Ben bir okurum. Okur olarak üzerimde bıraktıkları intibaaya göre değerlendirmeyi yeğliyorum. Bu kitabın üzerimde bıraktığı intiba çok derin felsefi boyutları olduğuna dair oldu. Pek çok yerini not ettim.

"Hafif bir rüzgâr çıkıyor: Dönüşüyorum rüzgâra." (s.136)

Bitik Adam ve Yanık Saraylar vardı aslında okuma sıramda. Ancak her ikisini de istediğim gibi okuyamadım. Bitik Adam'daki boşluksız yekpare metin tarzı benim gözlerimi çok yordu. Yanık Saraylar ise okumaktan vaz geçmediğim, ertelediğim bir kitap oldu. Onların yerine bunu ve Hasan Hüseyin'in Oğlak kitabını aldım.

"Taşlarla konuş, yıldızlar yanıtlasın.
İlkin belirsizleşir görünür olan:
Işığın olduğu yere git." (s. 80)

Bilgeliğin, bilginin yolculuğuna çıktım bu şiirlerde. Oldukça hüzünlü zamanlar geçiriyoruz. Kara haberler geliyor üst üste. Ancak bilgi, bilmek... Okumak... Okumanın dünyasına sığınıyorum yine.

M. Baran
15.02.2021
Ankara

Bir de şarkı bırakayım:
Tülay German - Ne Pleure Pas

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Words for the Wind - Theodore Roethke

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition

Excerpt from ‘I’m Here’ a poem by Roethke


Roethke is one of my favorite 20th century poets and he’s from the Midwest. Here are my favorite poems from this collection.

1. Prayer - a poem about which of the five senses that the author would like most to keep.

2. The Heron - author watches a heron catch its prey.

3. Vernal Sentiment - author rejoices in spring.

4. Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze - a man recalls the three ladies who worked in the greenhouse and doted on him when he was a young boy.

5. Child on Top of a Greenhouse - an embarrassing and relatable episode from childhood.

6. My Papa’s Waltz - a tipsy father teaches his little boy the waltz.

7. Elegy for Jane - a teacher laments his student’s death from a horse riding accident.

8. Words for the Wind - a veiled nature poem about the author’s love for his new wife.

9. I’m Here - an aging woman reflects on her natural surroundings. Perhaps my favorite poem in this collection.

4 stars.

[Allan MacDonell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry can be complicated, but not necessarily as a fault. Theodore Roethke had heavier loads of meaning than the standard-issue English sentence is capable of containing. So maybe half of what I read in Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke breezed clear over my head, and I like that. I don’t need to comprehend every nuance so long as the major bits I do understand open into the universal mystery truths that form the core to all of us. The four short verses of “My Papa’s Waltz,” a Roethke poem gnawed over in a junior college elective-lit class about 40 years ago, were the memory bait that drew me into Words for the Wind. The lines extend more to me now than they did the first time through, and next time I pass by the meanings will extend deeper and truer too.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always forget how great Roethke really was. You can see him pretty easily in anthologies or maybe poetry class syllabi- "My Papa's Waltz" is a stalwart- but I've never quite given him a deeper reading. As an American poet, he may be out-shined by the bigger names, greats like Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Crane, Eliot (if he counts as an American), and others.

But having recently grabbed his book off the shelf when some fresh, clear, subtle poetry reading was needed I discovered that Roethke really has quite a bit to offer. The poems are accessible but ineffable, mystical yet earthly, deeply introverted but universal, and I was surprised to see how many props he got from critics and his students both in his own time and after.

I'm not a believer that poetry must be comprehensible to everyone to be of good quality- more that it's really great to see that a poet with Roethke's level of intensity and rigorous self-analysis had a pretty wide readership. And I love the way he walk the line between writing out of a private set of torments, dreams, and longings but still have the vulnerability of writing something readable.

Here's one of his most famous ones, justly so, it's called The Waking:

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go."

This one is just a section from a longer poem but it will make you catch your breath:

"It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.

It was beginning winter.
The light moved slowly over the frozen field,
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind.

Light traveled over the field;
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait."

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long-time favorite. I bought this book while in college, and pull it up regularly to reread it.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The waves on the Peconic Bay started yelling and throwing themselves at me as I read the penultimate stanza in this collection. The sun was setting. Everything quieted down as I read the final four lines.
The poems are sometimes about moss and birds. Birds that you don't come across too much like larks and siskins and catbirds.
Range. Praise to the End! is so different from Meditations of an Old Woman or whatever that last bit is called. I think I like it better when Roethke is not channeling a toddler.
Pretty, pretty. I like walking through pretty places, reading pretty books these days.

[absigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great deal of poetry I feel I’m too young to understand. despite the feeling of bleakness, I very much enjoyed. greenhouses, ghosts, and meditations of an old woman.

this is the first book I have read in its entirety since eighth grade.

[Emily Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

If lyricism or conceptualism is your jam, I think you'd enjoy this. I liked seeing the evolution in his older to newer poems.

"I Knew a Woman" was the best part for me. His concept of what it was to love this woman seemed a bit ambiguous but also really familiar for me. It's like he makes the argument that knowing eternity is loving a woman. I dig that.

[Jonathan Koven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roethke created nature and nostalgia poems like no one else. They're strange, enlightening, lush, playful. The better pieces verge on spiritual / mythical. The early work catalogued here is more rhyme-based and there's a whole section in this collection for children; also a section for love poems, a section in remembrance of a fellow poet, and a section concerned with existential purpose. Not everything worked for me, but what did was excellent. Definitely recommended for anyone who wants a career-spanning introduction to Roethke.