Roethke remains, despite shadows of doubt about his ultimate value, a seminal voice in contemporary poetry. He must be one of the most uneven poets ever called "great" in serious critical writing. He consistently explored new territory only to retreat into the security of old and often secondhand styles. He could be as false to his deepest visions as he was to his unique voice. But if his poetry sounds with echoes from the past it also reverberates into the future. For all his occasional clumsiness Roethke is a poet's poet…. [He was] a dominant influence on most of our recent mystical or oracular poets, poets of transcendent landscapes and magical transformations. (p. 267)
The rivers of [Roethke's] "North American Sequence" appear in such physical detail that we wonder at first whether physical description is the whole aim of the poetry. In a way it is; Roethke wants us to feel the objects in his poetry as he leads us to the revelations he will not always articulate, or cannot articulate, lacking … precision with abstract language.
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