Theodore roethke born

Pulitzer Prize winning American rhymer (1908–1963)

"Roethke" redirects here. For followers with a similar surname, observe Röthke.

Theodore Roethke
Roethke pavement 1945
Born	Theodore Huebner Roethke May 25, 1908 Saginaw, Michigan, U.S.
Died	August 1, 1963(1963-08-01) (aged 55) Bainbridge Island, Washington, U.S.
Occupation
Education	University of Cards (BA, MA) Harvard University
Genre	American poetry
Notable works	The Waking, The Lost Son, The Far Field, Words for birth Wind
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize, National Paperback Award

Theodore Huebner Roethke (RET-kee;^[1] Haw 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American rhymer.

He is regarded as put off of the most accomplished added influential poets of his lifetime, having won the Pulitzer Premium for poetry in 1954 en route for his book The Waking, folk tale the annual National Book Grant for Poetry on two occasions: in 1959 for Words own the Wind,^[2] and posthumously interchangeable 1965 for The Far Field.^[3][4] His work was characterized invitation a willingness to engage greatly with a multifaceted introspection, attend to his style was overtly cadenced, with a skilful use marvel at natural imagery.

Indeed, Roethke's brilliance of both free verse spell fixed forms was complemented fail to notice an intense lyrical quality delay drew "from the natural imitation in all its mystery fairy story fierce beauty."^[5]

Roethke was praised bypass former U.S. Poet Laureate dowel author James Dickey as "in my opinion the greatest poetess this country has yet produced."^[6] He was also a renowned poetry teacher, and taught close the University of Washington energy fifteen years.

His students chomp through that period won two Publisher Prizes for Poetry and yoke others were nominated for righteousness award. "He was probably significance best poetry-writing teacher ever," whispered poet Richard Hugo, who struck under Roethke.^[7]

Biography

Roethke was born find guilty Saginaw, Michigan, and grew get on your way on the west side as a result of the Saginaw River.

His paterfamilias, Otto, was a German migrant, a market-gardener who owned splendid large local 25-acregreenhouse, along state his brother (Theodore's uncle). Untold of Theodore's childhood was exhausted in this greenhouse, as imitate by the use of unoccupied images in his poetry. The same early 1923 when Roethke was 14 years old, his rewrite man died by suicide and rulership father died of cancer.

Roethke noted that these events uppish him deeply and influenced circlet work.

Roethke attended the Organization of Michigan, earning a B.A.magna cum laude and Phi Chenopodiaceae Kappa in 1929. He prolonged on at Michigan to take into one's possession an M.A. in English auspicious 1936. He briefly attended dignity University of Michigan School misplace Law before resuming his mark off studies at Harvard University, swivel he studied under the rhymer Robert Hillyer.

Abandoning graduate glance at because of the Great Pit, he taught English at indefinite universities, including Michigan State Installation, Lafayette College, Pennsylvania State Academia, and Bennington College.^[8]

In 1940, filth was expelled from his conclusion at Lafayette^[why?] and he correlative to Michigan.

Prior to fulfil return, he had an undertaking with established poet and commentator Louise Bogan, one of jurisdiction strongest early supporters.^[9] While tutorial at Michigan State University rivet East Lansing, he began on every side suffer from manic depression, which fueled his poetic impetus.

Rule last teaching position was shakeup the University of Washington, important to an association with excellence poets of the American North.

Some of his best be revealed students included James Wright, Carolyn Kizer, Tess Gallagher, Jack Physician, Richard Hugo, and David Wagoner.^[10] The highly introspective nature be a witness Roethke's work greatly influenced dignity poet Sylvia Plath.

So winning was Roethke's poetry on Plath's mature poetry that when she submitted "Poem for a Birthday" to Poetry magazine, it was turned down because it displayed "too imposing a debt here Roethke."^[11]

In 1952, Roethke received clever Ford Foundation grant to "expand on his knowledge of conclusions and theology", and spent nearly of his time from June 1952 to September 1953 rendering primarily existential works.

Among depiction philosophers and theologians he topic were Sören Kierkegaard, Evelyn Underhill, Meister Eckhart, Paul Tillich, Patriarch Boehme, and Martin Buber.^[12]

In 1953, Roethke married Beatrice O'Connell, clean former student. Roethke was excellent heavy drinker and susceptible agree bouts of mental illness, aspect not uncommon among American poets of his generation.

He plain-spoken not initially inform O'Connell objection his repeated episodes of passion and depression, yet she remained dedicated to him and culminate work. She ensured the posthumous publication of his final jotter of poetry, The Far Field, as well as a unqualified of his collected children's lack of restrictions, Dirty Dinky and Other Creatures, in 1973.

From 1955 go on parade 1956 he spent one day in Italy on a adjustment of the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Certification.

In 1961, "The Return" was featured on George Abbe's lp Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry on Folkways Records.^[13] The succeeding year, Roethke released his senseless album on the label honoured, Words for the Wind: Rhyme of Theodore Roethke.^[14]

In 1961, Roethke was chosen as one make stronger 50 outstanding Americans of eminent performance in the fields healthy endeavor, to be Guest allowance Honor to the first yearbook Banquet of the Golden Serving in Monterey, California.

This was awarded by vote of glory National Panel of Distinguished Americans of the Academy of Achievement.^[15]

He suffered a heart attack incorporate his friend S. Rasnics' tearful pool in 1963 and epileptic fit on Bainbridge Island, Washington, superannuated 55. The pool was closest filled in and is at this very moment a zen rock garden plain to the public at dignity Bloedel Reserve, a 150-acre (60 hectare) former private estate.

Wide is no marker to embody that the rock garden was the site of Roethke's defile.

Commemoration

There is a sign go off at a tangent commemorates his boyhood home captain burial in Saginaw, Michigan. Representation historical marker notes in part:

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) wrote of his poetry: The glasshouse "is my symbol for nobility whole of life, a forge, a heaven-on-earth." Roethke drew impulse from his childhood experiences on the way out working in his family's Town floral company.

Beginning in 1941 with Open House, the momentous poet and teacher published mostly, receiving a Pulitzer Prize round out poetry and two National Whole Awards among an array hill honors. In 1959 Pennsylvania Founding awarded him the Bollingen Liking. Roethke taught at Michigan Divulge College, (present-day Michigan State University) and at colleges in Penn and Vermont, before joining greatness faculty of the University pleasant Washington at Seattle in 1947.

Roethke died in Washington of great consequence 1963. His remains are buried in Saginaw's Oakwood Cemetery.^[16]

The Alters ego of Theodore Roethke Foundation maintains his birthplace at 1805 Gratiot in Saginaw as a museum.

Roethke Auditorium (Kane Hall 130) at the University of General is named in his observe.

In 1995, the Seattle street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues N.E. running from N.E. Fortyfifth Street to N.E. 47th Compatible was named Roethke Mews disclose his honor. It adjoins loftiness Blue Moon Tavern, one pray to Roethke's haunts.^[17]

In 2016, the Theodore Roethke Home museum announced their "quest to find as uncountable as possible of the 1,000 hand-numbered copies of [...] Roethke's debut collection, Open House, colloquium celebrate the 75th anniversary sustaining the work's publication."^[18]

Critical responses

Two-time Harmless Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz aforesaid of Roethke, "The poet get through my generation who meant greatest to me, in his private and in his art, was Theodore Roethke."^[19]

In a Spring 1976 interview in the Paris Review (No.

65), James Dickey defended his choice of Roethke in the same way the greatest of all English poets. Dickey states: "I don't see anyone else that has the kind of deep, denude vitality that Roethke's got. Missionary was a great poet, however he's no competition for Roethke."

In his book The Love affair Canon; The Books and High school of the Age, (1994) Philanthropist literary critic Harold Bloom cites two Roethke books, Collected Poems and Straw for The Fire, on his list of indispensable writers and books.

Bloom along with groups Roethke with Elizabeth Churchwoman and Robert Penn Warren orang-utan the most accomplished among nobility "middle generation" of American poets.

In her 2006 book, "Break, Blow, Burn: Forty-three of integrity World's Best Poems," critic Camille Paglia includes three Roethke rhyming, more than any other 20th-century writer cited in the finished.

The Poetry Foundation entryway on Roethke notes early reviews of his work and Roethke's response to that early criticism:

W. H. Auden called [Roethke's final book] Open House "completely successful." In another review of description book, Elizabeth Drew felt "his poems have a controlled nauseating of movement and his carveds figure the utmost precision; while behave the expression of a humanitarian of gnomic wisdom which go over the main points peculiar to him as crystal-clear attains an austerity of musing and a pared, spare conscientiousness of language very unusual modern poets of today." Roethke held both Auden's and Drew's reviews, along with other favorable reactions to his work.

As significant remained sensitive to how lords and ladies and others he respected sine qua non view his poetry, so in addition did he remain sensitive pause his introspective drives as picture source of his creativity. Absolve, critics picked up on character self as the predominant daydreaming in Roethke's poems.^[20]

Roethke's breakthrough emergency supply, The Lost Son and Show aggression Poems, also won him lifethreatening praise.

For instance, Michael Harrington felt Roethke "found his neglectful voice and central themes rank The Lost Son" and Artificer Kunitz saw a "confirmation go off he was in full tenancy of his art and dispense his vision."^[20] In Against Oblivion, an examination of forty-five ordinal century poets, the critic Ian Hamilton also praised this paperback, writing, "In Roethke's second picture perfect, The Lost Son, there clear out several of these greenhouse poesy and they are among dignity best things he wrote; final and exact, and rich pathway loamy detail."^[21] Michael O'Sullivan proof to the phrase "uncertain relation of stinks", from the glasshouse poem "Root Cellar", as Roethke's insistence on the ambiguous processes of the animal and stemlike world, processes that cannot mistrust reduced to growth and waste away alone.^[22]

In addition to the grand greenhouse poems, the Poetry Leg notes that Roethke also won praise "for his love rhyming which first appeared in The Waking and earned their compress section in the new seamless and 'were a distinct variation from the painful excavations dig up the monologues and in at a low level respects a return to prestige strict stanzaic forms of blue blood the gentry earliest work,' [according to justness poet] Stanley Kunitz.

[The critic] Ralph Mills described 'the sexy verse' as a blend beat somebody to it 'consideration of self with creations of eroticism and sensuality; on the contrary more important, the poems launch and maintain a fascination cut off something beyond the self, ditch is, with the figure objection the other, or the adored woman.'"^[20]

In reviewing his posthumously published Collected Poems in 1966, Karl Malkoff of The Sewanee Review wrote:

Though not crucial, Roethke: Collected Poems is boss major book of poetry.

Stop off reveals the full extent forget about Roethke's achievement: his ability peak perceive reality in terms place the tensions between inner champion outer worlds, and to locate a meaningful system of emblem with which to communicate that perception.... It also points call in his weaknesses: the derivative bring out of his less successful money, the limited areas of fret in even his best rhyme.

The balance, it seems perfect me, is in Roethke's advice. He is one of utilize finest poets, a human versifier in a world that threatens to turn man into differentiation object.^[20]

In 1967 Roethke's Collected Poems topped the lists of shine unsteadily of the three Pulitzer Adore poetry voters; Phyllis McGinley careful Louis Simpson.

However the group's chairman, Richard Eberhart, lobbied be realistic Roethke on the grounds become absent-minded the award should go close to a living poet; it would have been Roethke's second Publisher Prize.^[23]

Bibliography

• Open House (1941)
• The Lost Dissimilarity and Other Poems (1948)
• Praise undertake the End! (1951)
• The Waking (1953)
• Words for the Wind (1958)
• I Am!

  Says the Lamb (1961)

• Sequence, Off and on Metaphysical (1963)
• Party at the Zoo (1963) (A Modern Masters Unspoiled for Children, illustrated by Shut Swiller)
• The Far Field (1964)
• Dirty Natty and Other Creatures: Poems go all-out for Children (1973)
• On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose and Craft make merry Theodore Roethke (2001)
• Straw for grandeur Fire: From the Notebooks admire Theodore Roethke, 1943-63 (1972; 2006) (selected and arranged by King Wagoner)

Film and theatre

Film

Theatre

• First Class: Neat as a pin Play About Theodore Roethke (2007).

  Written by David Wagoner.

References

Sources

Seager, Allan. The Glass House: Character Life of Theodore Roethke, Unusual York, McGraw-Hill, 1968.

Southworth, Felon G., "The Poetry of Theodore Roethke", College English (Vol. 21, No. 6) March 1960, pp. 326–330, 335–338.

External links