Theodore Roethke Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Stephen Spender

Critical Essay by Stephen Spender

SOURCE: A review of Words for the Wind, in The New Republic, Vol. 141, Nos. 6-7, August 10, 1959, pp. 21-2.

Spender was an English man of letters who rose to prominence during the 1930s as a Marxist lyric poet and as an associate of W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. His poetic reputation has declined in the postwar years, while his stature as a prolific and perceptive literary critic has grown. In the following review, Spender lauds the best verse in Words for the Wind but notes the need for Roethke to expand his range as a poet.

Poetry is an instrument which can be put to a great many uses, but as a medium it is sense-bound; however far the poetry goes beyond the senses, it is expressed in terms of them. This tells us something about the poet: that quite apart from...
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