SOURCE: "The Field Where Water Flowers: Theodore Roethke's 'North American Sequence,'" in Our Last First Poets: Vision and History in Contemporary American Poetry, University of Illinois Press, 1981, pp. 31-61.

In the following essay, Nelson examines theme and image of "North American Sequence" in The Far Field, drawing attention to Roethke's pastoral tone, American sensibility, and frequent allusion to the infinite and rebirth.

     I think of American sounds in this silence:
     On the banks of the Tombstone, the wind-harps having their say,
     The thrush singing alone, that easy bird,
     The killdeer whistling away from me,
     The mimetic chortling of the catbird
     Down in the corner of the garden, among the raggedy lilacs,
     The bobolink skirring from a broken fencepost,
     The bluebird, lover of holes in old wood, lilting its light song,
     And that thin cry, like a needle piercing the ear, the insistent cicada,
     And the ticking of...