There is a common critical opinion that for Roethke, "all problems centered in the self" …, and that "one of Roethke's gravest limitations [was] that his feeling for the specifically human dimension [was] insecure"…. What little critical comment there is on Roethke's "Dolor" places the poem against this background of the preoccupied self, and sees it as the exception that proves the rule. For example, for Karl Malkoff, "Dolor" is "the possible exception" to his opinion that "Roethke was never able to write very good poetry about society." And the poem is Kenneth Burke's exception to his opinion that in The Lost Son, Roethke "goes as far as humanly possible in quest of a speech wholly devoid of abstractions."

My point is that "Dolor" is no proving exception at all. Instead, the poem itself demonstrates the rule. Roethke does use abstract words; but he connects them so personally to...