Poetry Bookclub 2

I've been reading "In A Dark Time" for so many years (probably over 25 years!) and returning to it reguarly that I don't know where to begin. I guess I should start with structure and theme. It's four stanzas of six lines each of iambic pentameter and where the first four lines are unrhymed and a rhyming closing couplet. The themes of each stanza are structured in this way: Stanza 1, Disintegration or division; Stanza 2, the journey out; Stanza 3, a correspondence; Stanza 4, reunification. So there is a movement, a journey, from disintegration to reunification.

One of the poetic techniques that Roethke employes is an echoing within lines. Notice how words get repeated in a line:
Line 2: shadow/shade, Line 3 echo/echoing, Line 9 purity/pure, Line 18 natural/unantural, Line 19 dark/darker, Line 23 mind/mond. Besides the beauty of the sounds echoing, the technique supports the dichotomy of the self, the self dividing. I think Quasi is correct that the heron and the wren also shows a metaphor of splitting.

Another incredible technique that Roethke employs is literary allusions to other poems. Notice the allusions throughout: Plato's allegory of the cave, Dante's Purgatory of the winding path on an edge, Baudelaire's poem"Correspndences," Emily Dickenson's poem "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died," Wallace Stenven's "Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour," and Dante's Paridisio. At least these are the ones I can identify. You will have to look them up and find them. Perhaps I will post them myself later.

One last thing for now. I must highlight one of the absolute greatest lines not just of poetry but of all humanity: "What's madness but nobility of soul/At odds with circumastances."

I definitely will have more to say. :D

I mentioned some allusions in that last post. Here are the full poems Roethke alludes to.

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CORRESPONDENCES
by Charles Baudelaire

Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes emit confused words;
Man crosses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.

Like long echoes that mingle in the distance
In a profound tenebrous unity,
Vast as the night and vast as light,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors respond to one another.

Some perfumes are as fresh as the flesh of
children, Sweet as the sound of oboes, green as pastures
-- And others corrupt, rich, and triumphant,

Having the expanse of things infinite,
Such as amber, musk, benzoin, and incense,
That sing of the flight of spirit and the senses.

Here's the original French:

CORRESPONDANCES
by Charles Baudelaire

La nature est un temple où de vivants pilliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent.

Ii est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
-Et d'autres corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

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I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died
by Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air --
Between the Heaves of Storm --

The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset -- when the King
Be witnessed -- in the Room --

I willed my Keepsakes -- Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable -- and then it was
There interposed a Fly --

With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz --
Between the light -- and me --
And then the Windows failed -- and then
I could not see to see --

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Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
by Wallace Stevens

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

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You will have to look up Dante and Plato yourself, but I think you can see the allusions to them and within the poems I posted here.

Virgil, your choice of the most outstanding lines..."What's madness but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstances." are the highlight for myself as well and Stlukesguild's comment ..."The suggestion of a link between madness and the poet's personal struggles might be a tired cliché in the work of many writers... but not so much with Roethke... especially when one considers his own personal experience with exorcising such demons... and the fact that he never wallows in a "woe is me" attitude, but rather suggests something of a visionary deeper understanding of or transformation of the self growing out of his experiences." defines this further and perfectly.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

This poem is quite fabulous... and far less obscure or hermetic than The Shape of the Fire... although I would not think to reduce it to any single simple "meaning". The sound or music of this poem is more traditional with its use of rhyme... but still there are the more complex echoes... repetitions of sound: assonance, consonance, rhyme within lines and not merely at the end of lines:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

Knowing Roethke's connection with American Romantics of the West Coast... especially the Northwest... and their connection with Asian poetry... I wonder if Roethke's musical structure of internal rhyme and repetition might not echo such poetic uses as found in Asian... and especially Chinese poetry... as well as the Anglo-Saxon poetic forms filtered through Pound and Hopkins as I mentioned earlier.

Roethke was deeply passionate about the great Romantic and mystical poets such as Whitman, Emerson, Blake, Wordsworth, and Yeats. I definitely sense an imagery drawn from... or at least suggestive of many of the Romantic poems of the poet's personal travel through a dark place...

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--

These lines immediately suggest an affinity with nothing less than Dante's Inferno:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

(Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard -- so tangled and
rough- Pinsky tr.)

But there are also echoes of Eliot- "Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened" (which may not be surprising considering Eliot's profound admiration of Dante).

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!

The suggestion of a link between madness and the poet's personal struggles might be a tired cliché in the work of many writers... but not so much with Roethke... especially when one considers his own personal experience with exorcising such demons... and the fact that he never wallows in a "woe is me" attitude, but rather suggests something of a visionary deeper understanding of or transformation of the self growing out of his experiences.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Again I think of Dante's Comedia... which is essentially the journey of the soul... in which the poet awakens... in spite of the great length of the poem and the time that seemingly has passed... but a short time later... yet profoundly transformed. Also... to my mind... there are reverberations of San Juan de la Cruz' (St. John of the Cross') equally visionary Dark Night of the Soul.

...There is the lucky dark...
no sign for me to mark,
no other mark, no guide
except for my heart- the fire- the fire inside!

That led me on
keener than sunlight in the highest blue...

O dark of night, my guide!...

I stayed, I stayed; forgot me...

slipped from the me and not-me
and ties of earth untwined
among the lilies falling and out of mind.

from The Dark Night (of the Soul)- San Juan de la Cruz, tr. John Frederick Nims

Hopefully I'm making some sense as I'm actually sick as a dog this evening:sick:.

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Oh I missed the concluding posts on the previous page. I agree with everything you say. I had never thought about The Dark Night of the Soul as an allusion. I do think Roethke intended it.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Seems interesting, just a question though;

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Wind as in breeze, or Wind as in wound? What do you think? I personally am opting for a pun, since wind (breeze) would be the obvious word, yet wind (wound) would be the obvious rhyme, which seems fitting, and also contextually can be just as valid.

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JBI, there is a play of words on tear as in weeping and tear as in rip. The narrator is a "lord of nature weeping to a tree" but later is "tearless." And certainly there is a pun in the last line of "tearing." Remember that the lord of nature is the alter ego, a split self, someone who has been torn from his central ego. The lord of nature is the noble soul which gets picked up in the next stanza and is the mad, schitzophrenic half of the narrator. The lord of nature is also the one who corresponds with nature in the third paragraph. But in the fourth paragraph the nature is reduced to a maddened fly and a wind that tears. He has escaped the disintegrating forces of nature, the physical world, to an absorbing God, into the mind, an abstract form. I hope you see how that all interweaves.

We ready for the next poem?

Just as an aside, I thought this quote from a blog was quite good, about Roethke- generally: "Among the many books I ordered from Amazon last December, the one that I've been reading a lot lately has been Theodore Roethke's Collected Poems. In fact I'm enjoying it so much that over the next few weeks I intend to read it from cover to cover - perhaps the first Collected I've read that way in a long time, since perhaps T.S. Eliot's, which I read shortly after graduating from university (over 20 years ago now…). Like Eliot's, Roethke's Collected is not particularly long, running some two hundred and sixty pages. It reads more like a selected. Minor poems, major linked works, but not a weak poem to be found, so far at least. (At this point, I've almost finished the second of seven collections in the book, The Lost Son and Other Poems, first published in 1948.)

What is remarkable about Roethke is that he constructs a far-reaching and resonant dialogue from a limited - obsessively limited -- set of themes and images, practically all pastoral. I find that kind of singularity amazing in an age when we are bombarded by so many different influences from so many different directions. In times of hyper-abundance, such narrowness of focus could almost be taken as dishonest. Where Roethke is honest, where he takes risks, is in his fidelity to his subject matter (I'm sure I'm being tautological here, but being true to ones subject matter always entails great risk), his sensitivity, his vulnerability, his expression of his very real throes of manic-depressive illness, his adventurous thrust into a world of wholly subjective language. The pastoral provided a refuge and mooring place -- the beauty and archetypal qualities of plants, winds, soil, greenhouses, as well as the structured rhythms and rhyme schemes which no matter how committed he was to free verse he always returned to. Whatever Silliman may say (I honestly don't know what Silliman thinks of Roethke), no Poetry of Quietude this. Too much edginess and anxiety here; too much flight into the unknown.

In his first book, Open House (1941) Roethke establishes himself on very solid if conservative ground. Aside from a few starchy, highly compressed constructions where he tries to sum up Reality in a few words (I'm thinking of "The Adament", in particular, and a couple of others), these short poems - and those that begin his second collection -- are among his most successful and highly anthologized. I'm thinking of the title poem, "Cuttings 1 & 2", "My Papa's Waltz", & others. (For a link containing a Roethke bio and many of these, click here.)" source= http://briancampbell.blogspot.com/20...g-roethke.html And JBI: Virgil might have more to add about "In a Dark Time" but if not we are ready to move on. q1

One last thing on this poem. I wanted to discuss the last stanza. Here:

Quote:

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Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

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Do people think that the poem ends with death and unification with God or does the poem end as escape from maddeness into sanity, the unification with God being a metaphor? On the death side, the allusion to Dickenson's poem would suggest a death. On the sanity part, the allusion to Stevens's poem:

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Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

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I think suggests an imaginative integration of his schitzophrenic personas. At least to me. Perhaps he means both. Any comments?

My take on the ending is that transformation takes place, put only as one of an endless series of epistemological summits which for Roethke will lead to another.

Though I do not know Roethke as well as most of the rest of you, from my reading of the poem and what I took from it, I did not see the end as being death. I will have to agree with quasi

How about for the next one, "I Knew a Woman"?

Seems like an intriqueing poem to me and since I've never read it, I can't wait to see how Roethke percieved knowing a woman.

Ah... JBI! You are after my own heart! That was surely the poem I wished to suggest as well.

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/122.html

First reactions to Roethke usually are not worth much but if anyone ever wished Roethke would stop placing perfume on a goat...they get their wish here.

http://www.folkways.si.edu/trackdeta...x?itemid=30800 -- Hear Roethke recite the first stanza of "I Knew a Woman" from the Smithsonian.

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Originally Posted by JBI

How about for the next one, "I Knew a Woman"?

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Good choice. That's a fine poem, and very different from the two we've read so far.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...thke/woman.htm Previous critiques of "I knew A Woman" by Richard Allen Blessing and others.

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...thke/woman.htm Previous critiques of "I knew A Woman" by Richard Allen Blessing and others.

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Hey Quasi, that first article by Karl Malkoff:

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Karl Malkoff

The first of the purely sensual poems, "I Knew a Woman,' seems, at first glance, completely innocent; but closer examination reveals that the poem's words, like its lady, move "more ways than one." Double meanings dominate the poem: the lady teaches "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand"; the protagonist comes "behind her for her pretty sake"; and love, which likes a gander, "adores a goose." Even lines easily passed over have hidden sexual connotations: ". . .what prodigious mowing we did make." "To mow," in Scots dialect, means to have sexual intercourse. And should there be any doubt as to Roethke's knowledge of this meaning, the reader need only turn to "Reply to a Lady Editor," the poet's tongue-in-cheek response to the editor of a woman's magazine who had clearly missed the poem's suggestiveness; Roethke there calls Dan Cupid a "braw laddie-buck," and advises the editor just to lean herself back if be should arrive.

From Theodore Roethke: An Introduction to the Poetry. Copyright � 1966 by Columbia University Press.

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I had Malkoff as a professor in college for modern American poetry. ;) Not sure I agree with all his thoughts here. I do agree there is a double entendre.

Yes, "In A Dark Time" is a superficially pleasing construct, but a piece I am least impressed with. I happen to like the real challenge of intricacy the reader is presented with in some of the other selections. Any poet can allude, or argue with Eliot, but by the early 60's one is starved for something authentic, even within dialectic engagement. "The Shape of Fire" speaks to me much better on that account, not so much obscure as a jigsaw, scarred yet strong.

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

Yes, "In A Dark Time" is a superficially pleasing construct, but a piece I am least impressed with. I happen to like the real challenge of intricacy the reader is presented with in some of the other selections. Any poet can allude, or argue with Eliot, but by the early 60's one is starved for something authentic, even within dialectic engagement. "The Shape of Fire" speaks to me much better on that account, not so much obscure as a jigsaw, scarred yet strong.

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I see your point about allusions, but what makes "In A DArk Time" really special to me is that the allusions are so smoothly integrated into the language that they are not just allusions. The poem works without knowledge of the allusions and the allusions only amplify the meaning. Sometimes with Eliot and Pound the allusions are clumsy and choppy to the flow. I agree. I don't have any sense of that here.

Glad Virg. told me about -the discussion going on here. I haven't ever looked at Roethke in depth, so this sounds great. I may not have time to participate regularly, but I'll try to stop by and follow what's going on when I can. Love the choice of the next poem. What a piece of verse!

Quasi--Thanks for the link to Stanley Kunitz's memories of Roethke, and also for the recording of him reading. I enjoyed both a great deal.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I had Malkoff as a professor in college for modern American poetry. Not sure I agree with all his thoughts here. I do agree there is a double entendre.

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Pretty neat to run into some thoughts from your former prof., Virg. What don't you agree with? He seemed to be on pretty sound ground. The only thing that surprised me about his blurb was the idea that someone could think this poem was "completely innocent" even at first glance. Maybe I've just read too much Donne for my own good. :p There's a very Elizabethan/Jacobean quality to this poem. He uses those double entendres just like the best of that period and, as one of the critics on the page Quasi linked pointed out, he also demonstrates that impeccable use of the caesura, and in a way that reminds me a bit of the early 17th century. His style in this one also reminds me vividly of Yeats for some reason, but I haven't yet taken the time to analyze exactly why. I don't actually know much of anything about Roethke's influences, so I don't know how strongly Yeats may have been on his radar, but there seems to be something very Yeatsian going on here. In general, though, what a perfect blend of wit, naughtiness, and--as least so I think--quite genuine love and affection. There's so much going on in there, but I'll sign off for now and see what others (many who may know more about the poet) have to say. I'll also go back and read the rest of the thread to see what I've missed. :)

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

Glad Virg. told me about -the discussion going on here. I haven't ever looked at Roethke in depth, so this sounds great. I may not have time to participate regularly, but I'll try to stop by and follow what's going on when I can. Love the choice of the next poem. What a piece of verse!

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Roethke is so under valued. I think he's top notch.

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Pretty neat to run into some thoughts from your former prof., Virg. What don't you agree with? He seemed to be on pretty sound ground. The only thing that surprised me about his blurb was the idea that someone could think this poem was "completely innocent" even at first glance. Maybe I've just read too much Donne for my own good. :p

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I guess Makoff is right. But I didn't think this was double entredre:

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Double meanings dominate the poem: the lady teaches "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand"; the protagonist comes "behind her for her pretty sake"; and love, which likes a gander, "adores a goose."

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Maybe I just have an innocent mind. :p

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There's a very Elizabethan/Jacobean quality to this poem. He uses those double entendres just like the best of that period and, as one of the critics on the page Quasi linked pointed out, he also demonstrates that impeccable use of the caesura, and in a way that reminds me a bit of the early 17th century. His style in this one also reminds me vividly of Yeats for some reason, but I haven't yet taken the time to analyze exactly why. I don't actually know much of anything about Roethke's influences, so I don't know how strongly Yeats may have been on his radar, but there seems to be something very Yeatsian going on here. In general, though, what a perfect blend of wit, naughtiness, and--as least so I think--quite genuine love and affection. There's so much going on in there, but I'll sign off for now and see what others (many who may know more about the poet) have to say. I'll also go back and read the rest of the thread to see what I've missed. :)

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Good point on the caesura Petrarch, yes Roethke consciously uses it. He is a craftsman of a poet.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Maybe I just have an innocent mind. :p

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Innocent mind? Haha who are you fooling? You forget, I have seen some of your coments in the DL thread.

"How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,/ She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," Roethke in these lines (8,9) uses a form related to the Pindaric ode, from the lyric poets highest form of praise and exhibiting the depth of his knowledge of literary forms.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

Innocent mind? Haha who are you fooling? You forget, I have seen some of your coments in the DL thread.

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:lol: You're right. :D

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

"How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,/ She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," Roethke in these lines (8,9) uses a form related to the Pindaric ode, from the lyric poets highest form of praise and exhibiting the depth of his knowledge of literary forms.

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Yes. I guess it is double entendre. I just considered it a metaphor.

Now what a wonderful last stanza:

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Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

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I do think that Petrarch is right in recalling 17th century poetry. I think the bringing up of eternity and wanton and time alludes to marvell's To His Coy Mistress. Only with the difference that the male narrator here is the one being seduced.

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I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

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I just loved the first stazna of this poem

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I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,

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I think the first line is beautiful, and I think there is something almost primitive in the use of bones here. "lovely in the bones" almost sounds voodoesque to me. It makes me think of a Witchdoctor.

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When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;

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This is beautiful, and filled with sweet emotion. You can really feel a sense of tender love in these words.

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Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:

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This is a very beautiful and senusal, it seems to embrace the beauty of feminity. When I read it, I cannot help but to think of the swaying of hips.

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Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek

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These lines I found to be interesting, though I am not entierly sure what to make of them.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

I think the first line is beautiful, and I think there is something almost primitive in the use of bones here. "lovely in the bones" almost sounds voodoesque to me. It makes me think of a Witchdoctor.

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I just noticed it for the first time and I've been reading this poem for years, Roethke brings back the "bones" in the last stanza!

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This is a very beautiful and senusal, it seems to embrace the beauty of feminity. When I read it, I cannot help but to think of the swaying of hips.

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I think that's what he wants you to think.

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Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek

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These lines I found to be interesting, though I am not entierly sure what to make of them.

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That connects back to Turn, counter turn and stand. Greek poetry.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

That connects back to Turn, counter turn and stand. Greek poetry.

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Ahh ok, thanks for that. I wondered why those words were capatalized in the poem

Saginaw News (MI){PUBLICATION2}


July 26, 2008
Page: 3E



Remembering Roethke

JANET I. MARTINEAU The Saginaw News
As celebrations continue marking the centennial year of the birth of Saginaw native and Pulitzer-winning poet Theodore Roethke, fans pause next week to remember his death 55 years later. On Friday, the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation hosts a Roethke Remembrance With Candlelight and Jazz event.


The schedule is as follows:

2 p.m., reading and discussion of his epic poem, "The Lost Son," at his boyhood home, 1805 Gratiot in Saginaw.

4 p.m. to 7 p.m., ongoing tours of the home/museum and sales of poetry books written by area authors.

8 p.m., candlelight procession to Roethke's grave, reading of "The Lost Son" and three works by contemporary Saginaw poets: "Love Poem for Theodore Roethke, Oakwood Cemetery, 1908?1963" by Maxine Harris, "The Ghost on Gratiot" by Carol Lopez and "Shadow in the Glass House" by Marion Tincknell.

Meet at the entrance of Oakwood Cemetery, Gratiot at Midland roads.

9 p.m. to 11 p.m., dinner at Spencer's M-46, 5530 Gratiot, with performance by Brush Street, a jazz ensemble. Roethke was a jazz fan.

Participants will order from the menu and the restaurant will donate 10 percent to the Theodore Roethke Home Museum.

Roethke was born in Saginaw on May, 25, 1908, and died in Seattle, Wash., on Aug. 1, 1963, of a heart attack. He is an Arthur Hill High School graduate, and at the time of his death was a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Admission to all the events is free.

Judges picked, slam added

Meanwhile, plans continue at Saginaw Valley State University for the awarding of the 11th Triennial Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize in November.

Frank Bidart, who won the $3,000 prize in 1998, has selected the three judges who will choose the 2008 winner by mid-September. As set up in 1968, the prize winner is chosen by the three judges from worthy American writers they peruse on their own and not from solicited entries or nominations.

The judges are:

* Lloyd Schwartz, a Pulitzer-winning classical music critic and poet and commentator on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air." This summer the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts is setting some of his poems to music. Schwartz teaches English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

* Campbell McGrath, a historian, comedian, storyteller and poet who teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami. He has won numerous prizes and grants, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

* Peg Boyers, a poet and creative writing teacher at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the executive editor of the college's quarterly literary magazine "Salmagundi." Her recent book "Honey With Tobacco" contains autobiographical poems exploring her Cuban American experience and a childhood marked by travel and the tropics.

On Tuesday, Nov. 11, SVSU will host a 6 p.m. dinner and a 7:15 p.m. program during which the winner will read from his or her works. Both the dinner and the program are open to the public.

And in honor of the centennial year, SVSU has placed ads in Poetry magazine and on the Academy of American Poets Web newsletter at poets.org inviting the nation to the event.

Roethke's widow, Beatrice Roethke Lushington, also will attend the event.

SVSU is planning several other activities surrounding the awarding of the prize.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, its Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum will turn one of its classrooms into a coffee house atmosphere for a free poetry slam - with the winner selected by the audience.

Any and all poets may participate by reading their works. The winning poem will appear in the SVSU Cardinal Sins literary magazine.

Other events between the slam and the award evening are a "Roethke Haunts" tour featuring his boyhood home, grave, the Tittabawassee River (which inspired many of his poems) and a favorite watering hole in Old Saginaw City. Also planned is a program featuring New York poet Bill Heyen, a Roethke fan, and a performance of "Reveling in Roethke" by the River Junction Poets of Saginaw.

Copyright, 2008, The Saginaw News. All Rights Reserved. Used by NewsBank with Permission.

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How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

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A lot of this stanza has already been discussed previously. I have to agree that I think it is filled with double entendre. I think it is full of sensulaity.

Quote:

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She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin

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This is a beautiful line

Quote:

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She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,

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I found this line to be currious, as not completely certain of what was implied here and how this symbology fits into the rest of the poem and the other ideas which were expressed within.

And the sickle, rake. and mowing connects nicely with the grass and hay of the last stanza. :)

Yes it connects with grasy and hay, but I do not see how it fits in with the overall theme of the Poem.

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
.....I find these lines to be the center of this poem. Behind all the allure and beauty of Roethke's subject is this sense of time, or its instantanteity. Like all martyrs, at least of the religious type, his own mind set has predestined him.

I think this poem sort of fits with the earlier tradition of English verse, particularly in reference to Marlowe and Raleighs splendid reply. The question of Time, which is so rooted in Renaissance work, as Petrach has mentioned, is here turned completely upside down, in a sort of jazzy carpe diem poem, that is in a sense about the qualities of time, but completely ignores them. Roethke seems to be saying, to me at least, that all the fretting about death and age killing love is silly, as he already is (was) a slave to another more powerful thing - the woman, a stronger force.

She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,

I found this line to be currious, as not completely certain of what was implied here and how this symbology fits into the rest of the poem and the other ideas which were expressed within.

It would seem to me to reinforce the idea that he... the poet... is the one who is seduced... as she mows him down. Of course it all fits in with his professed (and surely exaggerated) innocence. He almost seems to proclaim that with such a woman he never had a chance.:blush:

Yes I can kind of see how that would work.

JBI... I agree that there is something of what you suggest to be found especially in the closing stanza:

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

"Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay..." Let time come and go as it will, he is indeed blinded by... enthralled with a greater force. In some ways I am also reminded of some of Yeat's later poems... the older poet forgetting all in the face of love and sensuality... or actually finding "an eternity in an hour"... spent with the woman who has so bewitched him.

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?

.....I find these lines to be the center of this poem. Behind all the allure and beauty of Roethke's subject is this sense of time, or its instantanteity. Like all martyrs, at least of the religious type, his own mind set has predestined him.

Quasi... Yes, I love this final stanza. There is this play back and forth:

"Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay"... he starts to muse upon the passage of time... but rather suggests that he is content to let the world and time slide on past.

"I'm martyr to a motion not my own"... Again I sense a double meaning: he, like all of us, is martyr to the passage of time which is not his to control... but he is also martyr to this woman... ah! the motion of those hips!! A conquest of reason by passion... like the tale of Phyllis and Aristotle.

"What's freedom for? To know eternity." So proclaims the poet's reason... but once again her charms complete bedazzle and distract him: "I swear she cast a shadow white as stone."

"But who would count eternity in days?"... And so he confronts the question of "eternity" and suggests that perhaps eternity is not measured in time... that perhaps it is indeed, to be found in an hour... spent with the woman who so bewitches him.

"These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)" ... And has SHE not become his purpose or reason and his only means of counting the passing minutes?

This thread has given me not so much of a new appreciation for Roethke, since there never was much to begin with, but a true appreciation of his poetry and almost every poem in this collection requires multiple readings.

Anyone else notice about 3/4 through the volume of his Collected Works he seems to shift away from free-verse, to a more consistent use of evenly lengthened lines, and traditional forms. What are you're thoughts on that?

Yes, I was noticing many subtle (and some not so subtle) changes in style. He reminds me of Wallace Stevens in the sense that as Roethke matured (aged?), his poetry became more distant with far less concern for readers without literary backgrounds. He is known to have T.S. Eliot as a model and he gravitated toward that "ideal" consciously and subconsciously.