Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

I set up a playlist of myself reading some favorite poems to help me get to sleep and stay asleep. Theodore Roethke's The Waking is one of the poems, so I was hearing it regularly on and off such that it's bizarreness and collage-like construction began to intrigue my sleepy mind. His I Knew a Woman is also on that playlist and reinforced the intrigue. I knew his earlier work was not like this, was more straightforward, less impressionistic, less collage-y, less full of odd questions. I was curious how he got from one to the other and so it was time to read a complete book of his work. So I did and he still confounds me, which is why it has taken me months from closing the book to come approach this review.

It's not uncommon for poets to have different modes/voices/styles throughout the length of their careers as artists, so why does it seem strange to me when it's true of Roethke? Perhaps because they're so distinct? His early work is about his childhood and usually uses traditional forms. At the end of his second book is when he breaks the measured voice and traditional leaning with the sequence The Lost Son. As I suspected it might be, it is a pretty striking break but I don't think he hit his stride with this voice or method of composing until his book The Waking. It remained until his last book, The Far Field, which struck me as at times being rather Wordsworthian. It was essentially turning back to an earlier mode.

Before The Far Field he also wrote some children's poetry, none of which I liked--and I usually do enjoy children's poetry, so I found that discouraging.

I read this book quite slowly because I was frequently asking myself "what is he doing here," and "why does this even work--it shouldn't." I can't say I came up with any answers. But it was helpful to discover that he kept a notebook. I know nothing about this notebook except that one of his former students, the poet David Wagoner, used the notebook to compose some poems himself. So I suspect that Roethke kept a collection of questions and thoughts and pleasing lines that he then drew from when composing. It's just a guess though and I still don't know how he made them work together as he did.

I don't usually look too deeply into a poet when I'm reading their work but you don't have to look too deeply into Roethke to discover he was lauded as a great teacher of poetry. He was reputedly critical to the careers of James Wright, Carolyn Kizer, David Wagoner, and Richard Hugo. One of the questions that arose for me is why when such a confluence happens on the eastern half of the US, it's considered a movement or a school of poetry and yet we never hear of the Northwest School--or the Roethke School. If anything Wagoner and Hugo are often slotted as regional. Maybe because their poetics aren't uniform enough? Maybe because Wright, whose style most clearly bears Roethke's influence, is usually associated with Ohio. Roethke himself is orginally from Michigan but spent his professional career in Washington state. Or is the collective shrugging at this confluence of talents a form of snobbery/snubbery? I don't have the answer to that either.

And I haven't decided if Theodore Roethke is one of my favorite poets or if he's simply a poet who wrote a couple of my favorite poems. I'm keeping this book to read again because I still find him curious. And the complete poetry of James Wright (a book I'd been on the cusp of getting anyway) and of Richard Hugo (a poet I'd largely forgotten about) are now on my reading shelf. I've already dipped back into Carolyn Kizer. I'm not sure what I'll do about David Wagoner, who passed in 2021. He has also written one of my favorite poems (Lost) but not much of his other work has appealed to me.

And so ends my first full perplexing experience with Theodore Rothke's poetry.