Theodore Roethke Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Don Bogen

SOURCE: "'The Method is Cyclic': The 'Lost Son' Sequence and Praise to the End!," in Theodore Roethke and the Writing Process, Ohio University Press, 1991, pp. 54-73.

In the following essay, Bogen explores the process of self-discovery and maturation as expressed by Roethke in "The Lost Son" and Praise to the End!, especially as influenced by parental relationships and sexual awakening.

If Roethke became a "master of description" in his composition of the greenhouse poems of the early '40s, his work during the rest of the decade was focussed on developing powers of "suggestion." The four-poem "Lost Son" sequence which concludes Roethke's second book is the first manifestation of this new development. While the greenhouse poems lead to self-discovery through the examination of specific memories, the later work is concerned with underlying patterns behind the memories; in it Roethke begins to delve directly into the unconscious, without the mediation of...
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