American Romanticism UHCL 2008 student poetry presentation

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the son of Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner, who, along with an uncle owned a local greenhouse. As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse observing nature. The greenhouse world, he later said, represented for him “both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan.” In 1923 his father died of cancer, an event that would forever shape his creative and artistic outlooks. From 1925 to 1929 Roethke attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Despite his family’s wish that he pursue a legal career, he quit law school after one semester. From there he spent 1929 to 1931, taking graduate courses at the University of Michigan and later the Harvard Graduate School. When the Great Depression hit Roethke had no choice but to leave Harvard; thus, he began to teach. In 1935, Roethke was hospitalized for what would prove to be a bout of mental illness, which would prove to be reoccurring. However the depression, as Roethke found, was useful for writing, as it allowed him to explore a different mindset.

Roethke’s poetry often revisited the landscapes of his childhood: the nature poems that make up the largest part of his early work try to bridge the distance between a child’s consciousness and the adult mysteries presided over by his father. Roethke arranged and rearranged these poems to give the sense of a spiritual autobiography, especially in preparing what are known as “the greenhouse poems” (The Lost Son, Praise to the End!, The Waking).

If the nature poems of Roethke’s first four books explore the anxieties within him since childhood, his later love poems show him in periods of release and momentary pleasure. These poems stand in sharp relief to the suffering Roethke experience in other areas of his personal life – several mental breakdowns and periods of alcoholism – which led to a premature death. While visiting with friends at Bainbridge Island in 1963, Washington, Roethke suffered a fatal heart attack.

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Objective 1a: To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.

A Romantic hero or heroine may appear empty or innocent of anything but readiness to change or yearning to re-invent the self or world--esp. the golden boy and fair lady; see also their counterparts, the dark lady and the Byronic hero

Objective 1b: To speculate on residual elements in “post-Romantic” writings from later periods incl. “Realism and Local Color,” "Modernism," and “Postmodernism.”(The poem was written in 1958.)

Objective 1c: The lyric poem (a momentary but comprehensive cognition or transcendent feeling—more prominent in European than American Romanticism?)

I Knew a Woman

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 a chorus, cheek to cheek).

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 we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

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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· Roethke uses alliteration of “s” words/sounds, both at the beginning and middle, to accentuate the soft essence of the woman.

o “When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them/ Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one”

· Refers to their relationship by farming tools – the sickle and the rake. He being the one not really necessary in the relationship; however, as he is “coming behind her for her pretty sake” he is trying to make some contribution to their union. He recognizes “what prodigious mowing we did make” – noting how they complement one another and how she brings out the best in him.

· He mainly points out her more innocent features at first: her choice virtues, her white skin.

· He then adds a bit of sexuality by mentioning her lips and knees – ultimately he ends up stating how “these old bones live to learn her wanton ways” clearly wishing to experience his sexual desires.

2. Is the man in the poem merely focused on his ultimate goal of sexual activity or is there more significance to his innocent expressions?

3. Is there anything to be said for the structure of the poem? For instance, his closing of each stanza with a line in parentheses.