Poetry Bookclub 2

[Virgil]

Well, I am not finished with "The Shape of Fire", so the rest of you can feel free to move on without me while I continue to examine it. I do not think the poem is truly about rebirth, even though Roethke certainly toys with the conceit. My reason for this is, I know something about both mental illness and broken bodies. Neither gets fixed, and I suspect Roethke knew it as well as Wittgenstein knew it, as well as I know it. Drugs and the brutality of good old fashioned psychiatric hospital treatments may lead to periods of stability, but a damaged brain once damaged remains so, and I think what the narrative voice attempts to examine is transformation as a redeemable process, without coming to any firm conclusions about it.

"transformation as a redeemable process" versus rebirth, isn't that about the same thing?

This is not a traditional rite of passage piece which leans toward salvation, and when I am finished my traditional monthly cycle of ailing, I will point toward a more complex reading than I've yet seen anyone offer--which is seemingly fitting. I do not think Roethke meant to be simplicity itself once the manic rhythm is settled into.

Looking forward to it. I must say I really liked this poem and any further explanation of it is very welcomed.

[Jozanny]

"transformation as a redeemable process" versus rebirth, isn't that about the same thing?

No, it isn't.

[Virgil]

No, it isn't.

You will have to explain it to me. When you're feeling better, of course.

[quasimodo1]

Before another posting on the "Fire" poem, I thought this piece on Roethke from artseditor.com would be apropos..."I don't recall exactly which of Roethke's poems appeared in that anthology. (I still own the book, by the way; but I'm 200 miles away from the shelf it's on now.) But I do recall that we read the obligatory "My Papa's Waltz" as a prime example of Roethke's control of form and tone. I'm sure we read the hallucinatory recollections (fitting for our psychedelic pastimes) in the title poem of The Lost Son and Other Poems, getting off on its dark children's ditties -"The weeds whined," goes one quatrain, "The snakes cried,/The cows and briars/Said to me: Die."-and its troublesome notational utterances that sound, we probably said, like Eliot on acid:

What a small song. What slow clouds. What dark water.
Hath the rain a father? All the caves are ice. Only the snow's here.
I'm cold. I'm cold all over. Rub me in father and mother.
Fear was my father, Father Fear.
His look drained the stones.

Maybe professor-poet Plumly, ruggedly handsome and hip with thick wavy hair at the head of the class, told us that these two poems, "My Papa's Waltz" and "The Lost Son," represent the extremes of style between which Roethke usually worked in his several succeeding collections of poems. He also must have introduced us to the two outstanding sequences of poems that Roethke is perhaps best known for: the so-called "greenhouse" poems written early in his career (from The Lost Son and Other Poems) and "The North American Sequence" written toward the end of it (from The Far Field, 1964). For these have been the poems I've returned to frequently since then for an experience of the sublime. I read the compact and explosive descriptions of the greenhouse poems for almost no other reason than to enter the root cellar at his family's nursery in Michigan..." -- http://www.artseditor.com/html/janua..._roethke.shtml

[quasimodo1]

An aside on Roethke: http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal...oets_02sp.html an interesting one-page vignette on the meeting of these two men.

[quasimodo1]

In order to have some designated time for discussion, and considering the fact the members post from every time zone possible...we will have Sunday afternoon and evening roughly from 4 PM to 12 midnight for a common meeting time. Any other time is of couse acceptable to post on this thread. Also any member who wishes, I encourage to comment. q1

[quasimodo1]

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

JOURNEY TO THE INTERIOR

I. In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the
Narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
--Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly. {first of three parts} This is not the next poem for discussion just a favorite Roethke passage of mine. Virgil will be starting the next discussion on "In a Dark Time". Tomorrow night would be good but we shall see what members sign in.

[Virgil]

I was wondering when I should start "In A Dark Time." Tomorrow is perfect.

I was noticing the first line of what you just posted above Quasi. " In the long journey out of the self". So much of Roethke is a journey, either out of the self or into the self.

[quasimodo1]

That's a journey I can identify with. Great that tomorrow works out. I'll will sign in starting around 7PM but you just start when you can. Thanks.

[quasimodo1]

from Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical


IN A DARK TIME

In a dark time, 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.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks-- is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have. {first half of this poem...topic for tonight's discussion}

[Dark Muse]

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

I adored this stanza. It was so superbly dark and rich. And there is something quite heathenistic about which I just love.

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

This line was just phenomenal.

A lord of nature weeping to a tree

I loved this too

I live between the heron and the wren,

I find these line interesting, I have noticed these two birds specifically seem to often appear in his pomes. Does anyone know why the heron and the wren have such significance to Roethke.

Also I have noticed in a lot of his work he references water, and considering the heron is a bird with a connection to water. Did he by chance live near water?

What’s madness but nobility of soul

I really like this line

This poem too me seems to be about a journey of the soul, ones quest to find themselves, and an awakening period, or time of Self-realization.

At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,

This seems to reflect a time of awakening, and struggle with the self. With the mention of day on fire, it seems to be the light breaking through the darkness

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

This seems to reflect a moment of possible freedom, or escape, for while the cave would result in a dead end and more darkness, a winding path offers another alternative, a way out.

[quasimodo1]

Well Muse, a line you highlighted now seems packed with extended meanings..."I live between the heron and the wren," Beside this dual-identity and a metaphor I take to mean one persona is that of a larger, agressive (assertive) type and the other a much smaller retiring type. In emerging from this "dark time", Roethke will have to gather the assets of both.

[Dark Muse]

I also thought it was interesting that while the wren, a smaller bird, and one which is more associated with the air and flight, while the heron, though it can fly, is in a way more "grounded" they are typically wading birds and are more associated with water than with air. And more often found on the ground than in the sky.

[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.

[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.

In terms of the rhyme though, he in two of the three other stanzas uses a full rhyme (wren/den, night/light), whereas he uses a half rhyme with cave and have, setting a possible president, and I think it a bit of a stretch to say he is using a half rhyme in the fourth stanza to continue a pattern (that seems a little bit unlikely). What are your thoughts on the couplet?

and, for any joiners wanting the full text, it is available here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...ke/poems/16320