Theodore (Huebner) Roethke - History, References to Roethke, Bibliography, Filmography

Poet, born in Saginaw, Michigan, USA. He studied at Michigan and Harvard universities, then taught at Pennsylvania State, Bennington, and Washington. It was not until the publication of his fourth volume, The Waking (1953, Pulitzer) that he became widely known. Words for the Wind (1958) is a selection from his first four books; his Collected Poems appeared posthumously in 1968.

Theodore Huebner Roethke (IPA: ['ɹ ɛ t.ki]; RET-key) (May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was a United States poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking.

History

Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. His father, Otto Roethke, was a German immigrant, who owned a large local greenhouse. The poet's adolescent years were jarred, however, by the death of his father from cancer in 1923, a loss that would powerfully shape Roethke's psychic and creative lives.

In 1953, Roethke married his former student, Beatrice O'Connell. Roethke did not inform O'Connell of his repeated episodes of depression, yet she remained dedicated to Roethke and his work. She ensured the posthumous publication of his final volume of poetry, The Far Field.

Theodore Roethke suffered a heart attack in a friend's swimming pool in 1963 and died in Bainbridge Island, Washington. There is no sign to indicate that the moss garden was the site of Roethke's death.

References to Roethke

In his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut includes an excerpt from Roethke's poem "The Waking". One was Words for the Wind, by Theodore Roethke, and this is what I found in there: I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Stanley Kunitz recounts Roethke's exuberant recitation of his children's poem, "The Cow", for Kunitz's daughter in the poem, "Journal for My Daughter" . Martin Sheen, playing President Josiah Bartlet on the TV series The West Wing, quotes the last two lines from the Roethke poem "Infirmity": "How body from spirit slowly does unwind | Frank Herbert, a quote from Dar-es-Balat in one of the last chapters of Heretics of Dune as follows:

The world is for the living. Who are they?

We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.

She was the wind when the wind was in my way.

Alive at noon, I perished in her form.

Who rise from the flesh to spirit know the fall:

The word outleaps the world.

--Theodre Roethke, Historical Quotations: Dar-es-Balat

Bibliography

Open House (1941) The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948) Praise to the End! (1951) The Waking (1953) Words for the Wind (1958) I am! written for children The Far Field (1964) – published posthumously On Poetry & Craft (1965) - a collection of prose The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1966) - includes 16 previously uncollected poems but does not include Party at the Zoo

Filmography

I Remember Theodore Roethke (2005).