Selected Poems

by Theodore Roethke

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.

Genres: Poetry, Literature

71 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

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

[J & J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michigan native (Saginaw) and compatriot of education, I found myself more intrigued by the life of Roethke than I did his poems (foreword written by Edward Hirsch). Overall, this collection had too many nature poems for my personal liking.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Selected Poems includes poems from six collections by Theodore Roethke, including: Open House , The Lost Son & Other Poems , Praise to the End! , The Waking: Poems: 1933 - 1953 , Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse , The Far Field . In addition, this selection includes Roethke's Poems for Children and excepts from his Notebooks...

From Open House (1941)...

Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm!
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marred by curse,
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked, and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, love, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I.

- "Long Live the Weeds" - Hopkins, pg. 4

From The Lost Son & Other Poems (1948)...

Under the concrete benches,
Hacking at black hairy roots, -
Those lewd monkey-tails hanging from drainholes, -
Digging into the soft rubble underneath,
Webs and weeds,
Grubs and snails and sharp sticks,
Or yanking tough fern-shapes,
Coiled green and thick, like dripping smilax,
Tugging all day at perverse life:
The indignity of it! -
With everything blooming above me,
Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses
Whole fields lovely and inviolate, -
Me down in that fetor of weed,
Crawling on all fours,
Alive, in a slippery grave.

- Weed Puller, pg. 9

From Praise to the End! (1951)...

1

A kitten can
Bite with his feet;
Papa and Mamma
Have more teeth.

Sit and play
Under the rocker
Until the cows
All have puppies.

His ears haven't time.
Sing me a sleep-song, please.
A real hurt is soft.

Once upon a tree
I came across a time,
It wasn't even as
A ghoulie in a dream.

There was a mooly man
Who had a rubber hat
And funnier than that, -
He kept it in a can.

What's the time, papa-seed?
Everything has been twice.
My father is a fish.

2

I sing a small sing,
My uncle's away,
He's gone for always,
I don't care either.

I know who's got him,
They'll jump on his belly,
He won't be an angel,
I don't care either.

I know her noise.
Her neck has kittens.
I'll make a hole for her.
In the fire.

Winkle will yellow I sang.
Here eyes went kissing away
It was and it wasn't her there
I sang I sand all day.

3

I know it's an owl. He's making it darker.
Eat where you're at. I'm not a mouse.
Some stones are still warm.
I like soft paws.
Maybe I'm lost,
Or asleep.

A worm has a mouth.
Who keeps me last?
Fish me out.
Please.

God, give me a near. I hear flowers.
A ghost can't whistle.
I know! I know!
Hello happy hands.

4

We went by the river.
Water birds went ching. Went ching.
Stepped in wet. Over stones.
One, his nose had a frog,
But he slipped out.

I was sad for a fish.
Don't hit him on the boat, I said.
Look at him puff. He's trying to talk.
Papa threw him back.

Bullheads have whiskers.
And they bite.

He watered the roses,
His thumb had a rainbow.
The stems said, Thank you.
Dark came early.

That was before. I fell! I fell!
The worm has moved away.
My tears are tired.

Nowhere is out. I saw the cold.
Went to visit the wind. Where the birds die.
How high is have?

I'll be a bite. You be a wink.
Sing the snake to sleep.

5

Kisses come back,
I said to Papa;
He was all whitey bones
And skin like paper.

God's somewhere else,
I said to Mamma.
The evening came
A long long time.

I'm somebody else now.
Don't tell my hands.
Have I come to always. Not yet.
One father is enough.

Maybe God has a house.
But not here.

- Where Knock Is Open Wide, pg. 41-44

From The Waking: Poems: 1933 - 1953 (1953)...

The spirit moves,
Yet stays:
Stirs as a blossom stirs,
Still wet from its bud-sheath,
Slowly unfolding,
Turning in the light with its tendrils;
Plays as a minnow plays,
Tethered to a limp weed, swinging,
Tail around, nosing in and out of the current,
Its shadows loose, a watery finger;
Moves, like the snail,
Still inward,
Taking and embracing its surroundings,
Never wishing itself away,
Unafraid of what it is,
A music in a hood,
A small thing,
Singing.

- A Light Breather, pg. 62

From Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse (1958)...

I came to a great door,
Its lintel overhung
With burr, bramble, and thorn;
And when its swung, I saw
A meadow, lush and green.

And there a great beast played,
A sportive, aimless one,
A shred of bone its horn,
And colloped round with fern.
It looked at me; it stared.

Swaying, I took its gaze;
Faltered; rose up again;
Rose but to lurch and fall,
Hard, on the gritty sill,
I lay; I languished there.

When I raised myself once more,
The great round eyes had gone.
The long lush grass lay still;
And I wept there, alone.

- The Beast, pg. 75

From The Far Field (1964)...

In heaven, too,
You'd be institutionalized.
But that's all right, -
If they let you eat and swear
With the likes of Blake,
And Christopher Smart,
And that sweet man, John Clare.

- Heard in a Violent Ward, pg. 111

From Poems for Children...

The Lamb just says, I AM!
He frisks and whisks, He can.
He jumps all over. Who
Are you? You're jumping too!

- The Lamb, pg. 126

From Notebooks...

If you can't think, at least sing
* * *
Dear God, I want it all: the depths and the heights.
* * *
An intense terrifying man: eating himself up with rage.
* * *
I practice at walking the void.
* * *
Why shouldn't I sing to myself?
* * *
And shall we leap the trees as light as birds?
* * *
I cursed my being visible.
* * *
In a deep deep yes. In all. I'm here alone and left.
* * *
Time has no home in me.
* * *
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light
* * *
Sweet stars, I'll ask a softer question: Moon
Attend me to the end. I'm here alone.
* * *
My face washed in the milk of this morning.
* * *
Heart, you have no house.
* * *
I slept with Yes, bu woke to No.
* * *
The exhausting fight against the inner fatigue, the soul-sickness.
* * *
To possess or be possessed by one's own identity?
* * *
The self, the anti-self in dire embrace.
* * *
The wing-tip of madness for Baudelaire: me, I live in the aviary.
* * *
A man struggling to find his proper silence.
* * *
O my poor words, bear with me.
* * *
My name is numb.
* * *
I can project myself easier into a flower than a person.
* * *
Fleeing the heart's blankness, I turned to flowers . . .
* * *
All reality sleeps here, in the seed, in the stem . . .
* * *
The two duties are to lament or praise.
* * *
I would put myself, pit myself against oblivion.
* * *
My memory, my prison.
* * *
I am nothing but what I remember.
* * *
The intolerable sadness that comes when we are aware at last of our own destiny.
* * *
To be weary of one's own individuality - is that to die?
* * *
My vision falling like a burning house.
* * *
All my lights go dark. I fold into black stone.
* * *
Make the language take really desperate jumps.
* * *
Remember: our deepest perceptions are a waste if we have no sense of form.
* * *
Puts his thought in motion - the poet.
* * *
Honesty: the only tricks of the real artist are technical.
* * *
I am a poet: I am always hungry.
* * *
Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
* * *
Never be ashamed of the strange.
* * *
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.
* * *
It is well to keep in touch with chaos.
* * *
I trust all joy.
* * *
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

- pg. 127-143

[emilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

some amazing new favourite poems – others lukewarm

[Russ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read bits and pieces of Roethke's poetry, but I have a much broader sense of him now. In subject matter he compares to Whitman and his association with the land and all that means. He is more formal, though, probably more in the line of Yeats, and he likes to compare himself to guys like Christopher Smart and John Clare. An eclectic set of influences, certainly, but it often works. He's a classic minor poet in my mind--there are no poems that blow me away, but his work is consistently good.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roethke's gift is how his words can stop time. I found myself in a still place with a stopped watch with many of his poems. I loved staying there for a while before being called back for sip of coffee. This ability to stop time and so smoothly open my soul to a particular place is what I qualify as the trait of the best poetry.

[Julia Bucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Old Florist

That hump of a man bunching chrysanthemums
Or pinching-back asters, or planting azaleas,
Tamping and stamping dirt into pots,--
How he could flick and pick
Rotten leaves or yellowy petals,
Or scoop out a week close to flourishing roots,
Or make the dust buzz with a light spray,
Or drown a bug in one spit of tobacco juice,
Or fan life into wilted sweet-peas with his hat,
Or stand all night watering roses, his feet blue in rubber boots.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roethke started out writing enjoyable and well-crafted nature poems, but apparently he got infected by the idiocies of modernism not far into his poetic career. That should have been the end of him, but the literati love a naked emperor. It's merr nonsense from midway through his second collection on. Such a pity. For a very small time I thought I'd finally found another good poet, and an American one at that. No such luck. Another one lost.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to these poems after reading part of The Far Field and have loved them ever since. There is something dark and stark about them and at the same time they are overflowing with images of plants and nature - sometimes kind, sometimes full of danger. I hadn't read these for a while and liked coming back to them again.

[Miriam Quiñones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tuve que agregar este libro porque aquí en Goodreads no está la versión que yo leí. Sin embargo también era una selección de sus poemas, con una cantidad similar de páginas.
Me encanta como forma los poemas y aunque pueda leerse algo ecléctico de vez en cuando, el tema general del poemario es fascinante!

[Steven Severance · Rating 5 out of 5]

VEry unique in American poetry.
Runs against the prevelant anemia and minimalism of most poetry of this time.
His last poems from the book "The Far Field" are especially good.

recommended if you are looking for a different knd of nature poetry.

[Gypsysoul_]

I keep putting this down for other books...I'm sorry Roethke, I promise to try harder to concentrate this week.

[James Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew a Woman, lovely in her bones.
Sometimes a poet just speaks directly to you, and your soul finds itself highlights for you to gaze into, time and again. Thank you Theo. Fabulous poet.

[Daniel J. Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection. Feel like I should read it a second time.

[charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was so beautiful

favourite poems:
- the lost son
- words for the wind
- the far field
- the rose
- in a dark time
- the sequel

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really love his poems about nature and those about human relationships. his longer more obscure poetry doesn touch me in the same way

[H]

My uninformed opinion is that the Romantic subject matter which Roethke took up--the abyss, lost innocence--always runs in contrary tension to any poet's choice of language. The Victorian Romantics tried to hide their words' materiality behind the seduction of cadence and rhyme, to make the sound itself a part of the sublime. Roethke in his early poems curiously dissociated by implementing Mother Goose-like rhyme, a building-block simplicity and wisdom with which to apprehend that for which there are no (simple or sophisticated) words.

To me I cannot help but find these poems terribly facetious and I can't take them seriously. This while acknowledging I tend to follow those "tweed-coated cliche masters." Not until his much later work in The Far Field do I pause and gasp; there he has inhabited both Whitman and Rilke, and modulated them with his peculiar primary-color style. The effect is original within a form (loosely pentametric) that the reader can successfully ignore. Even the end-stopped lines by then cease to be distracting. Hints of this had come earlier, as in "Elegy for Jane," when the subjects were so serious that the form would naturally be forgotten: borne and not created.

A guess: Li-Young Lee almost certainly derived the rose theme of his first book from "The Rose" in "North American Sequence."

Favorite fragments from the notebooks:

"Never be ashamed of the strange."
"Surround yourself with rising waters: the flood will teach you to swim."
"Those who are willing to be vulnerable move along mysteries."
"I trust all joy."
"I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words."
"As if I'm being tortured by the gods--this feeling there is some great task just beyond, a new triumphal rhythm."
"Get down where your obsessions are. For Christ's sake, shake it loose."

[nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love him. don't you? this little collection is adorable too.

i love

"Heard in a Violent Ward"

In heaven, too,
You'd be institutionalized.
But that's all right,--
If they let you eat and swear
With the likes of Blake,
And Christopher Smart,
And that sweet man, John Clare.

yes, roethke - i'd say:

If they let you eat and swear
With the likes of Plath,
And Flo Nightingale,
And that sweet, Ginny Woolf.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very different poet, with an interesting, whimsical, almost childlike progression of sound and narrative, this selected poems focuses first on the more "rhyme-time-y" verses and moves on to pieces that leave a bit more room to open their sound. The light sound with the dark undertone makes Roethke, to me, one of the most interesting poets.

[Julia Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roethke's poetry possesses a profound passion for nature, love, and the human body; his powerful gift for understating eroticism with such prowess only serves to bring his passions to the fore. At times I could hear the faint sound of seams weakening and beginning to tear. His restraint is absolutely tantalizing.

[Jake Bear · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this on an airplane flight. A few of the poems made me laugh. I came back to this bit several times:

" A wave of Time hangs motionless on this particular shore.
I notice a tree, arsenical grey in the light, or the slow
Wheel of the stars, the Great Bear glittering colder than snow,
And remember there was something else I was hoping for. "

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly spare and yet brimming with gorgeous imagery and a fully-engaged poetic heart. His descriptions, the elegance and economy of his language, are just stunning.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early stuff is really boring. "Notes" section is half great, half amazing. What isn't self-pitying seems to be too self-consciously "fun".

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

especially love his later poems

[Eliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's only so much a person should write about flowers and dirt and slugs. Senor Roethke has crossed that line.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

His poems about childhood are exquisite, especially "My Papa's Waltz" and "Root Cellar." He engages every one of the senses in his writing.

[Matt Comito · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find Roethke damn frustrating - often times just silly, often strained and histrionic but every now and then there's some perfect and graceful line that just sparkles

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something about Roethke's writing kicks my soul loose from it's foundations whenever I'm stuck in a rut. I really like his stuff for that very reason. It keeps me on my toes.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautiful! Every other page is marked to go back and read- can't wait to read more of him!

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how this guy writes about plants. Oh, and also office supplies.