SOURCE: "Our First Contemporary," in Theodore Roethke's Far Fields: The Evolution of His Poetry, Louisiana State University, 1989, pp. 1-13.

In the following essay, Balakian draws attention to Roethke's influence on modern American poetry, particularly his synthesis of autobiographical detail and transcendental consciousness reflected in the subsequent work of beat, confessional, and deep image poets.

Poets' reputations rise and fall with the currents of aesthetic fashion, the prevailing winds of critical methodology, and the vicissitudes of religious and philosophical world views. Of course reputations are not always an indication of artistic achievement, and the complex cultural processes that canonize writers and cast others into oblivion are not always just or reliable. No artist is immune from the relativism of a historical moment, yet I believe that truly significant art of a previous era will continue to define a part of the present and in doing so will transcend the...