In the following essay, Vanderbilt examines Roethke's regional self-identity and distinct American voice, particularly as influenced by his Midwestern origins and later years in Seattle.

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.

In the following essay, Vernon explores Roethke's affinity for garden imagery and the symbolism of sexual development, personal growth, and self-consciousness.

Donoghue is an Irish-born educator and literary critic. In his study The Arts without Mystery (1984), he attacks the tendency of contemporary societies to reduce art to a commodity. In the following essay, Donoghue perceives Roethke's poetry as an attempt to discern order and purpose in a world that may seem meaningless.

In the following essay, Gardner classifies Roethke's "North American Sequence" in the long poem genre and compares the method and style of the sequence to Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," which Gardner perceives as a model of the American long poem.

In the following essay, Bogen studies the evolution of Roethke's poetry as illustrated in the representative poems "Genesis," "On the Road to Woodlawn," and "Cuttings."

In the following essay, Williams provides a survey of Roethke's critical reception among contemporary poets and reviewers.

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.

The following is a transcript of a spoken address. Roethke discusses such topics as teaching, his literary influences, the role of readers, and the poetic process. In the absence of further information regarding the date of composition, the year of Roethke's death has been substituted for the essay date.

In the following essay, Floyd-Wilson examines Roethke's representation of women in his poetry, noting Roethke's idealization of the female persona and attempt to transcend self by portraying women as the dual embodiment of the universal and particular.

Kramer is a prominent art critic who has served on the staff of such journals as Arts Digest, Arts Magazine, Nation, New Leader, New Criterion, and the New York Times. In the following essay, which focuses primarily on the collection Praise to the End!, Kramer maintains that Roethke's treatment of prerational existence represents "the expression of a new primitivism. "

An American poet and critic, Mills has published several volumes of verse and studies of such poets as Richard Eberhart, Edith Sitwell, and Kathleen Raine, in addition to Roethke. As well, he is the author of the studies Contemporary American Poetry (1965), Creation's Very Self: On the Personal Element in Recent American Poetry (1969), and Cry of the Human: Essays on Contemporary American Poetry (1975). The following essay, published in 1962, is a revised version of an article that first appeared in...

In the following essay, Lewandowska claims that the poems in Praise to the End! evince the influence of the Bible's Psalms.

In the following essay, Blessing examines technical devices employed by Roethke to evoke dynamic energy and movement, particularly as evident in his elegies.

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.

In the following essay, Malkoff provides an overview of Roethke's life and work, noting developmental influences, recurring themes, and his major publications.

In the following essay, examines the connection between Roethke's manic-depression and evidence of mystical themes in his works.

In the following essay, Vanderbilt considers evidence of regionalism in Roethke's poetry.

Roethke can endow his brief lyrics with intensity of action. Nor is the effect got, as so often in short forms, merely by a new spurt in the last line. No matter how brief the poems are, they progress from stage to stage. Reading them, you have strongly the sense of entering at one place, winding through a series of internal developments, and coming out somewhere else. (pp. 69-70) Thus, though you'd never look to Roethke for the rationalistic, the expository steps are … ticked off as strictly ...

In the following essay, Spanier examines autobiographic allusions to the creative process revealed in the "Greenhouse Sequence" from Roethke's The Lost Son and Other Poems.

The purpose of this essay is to take representative poems from the first three books Roethke wrote, Open House (1941), The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948), Praise To The End (1951), and demonstrate what he called, in "The Renewal" "the shift of things." What he means by the phrase is shown in an article he wrote in 1950 entitled "Open Letter." His method is "cyclic," he says, and he believes "that to go forward as a spiritual man it is necessary...

An ambition to find order through poetry is movingly apparent [in Roethke's last poems]. The poems read like last poems, attempts to integrate his themes and bring his vision to final statement. All seem preoccupied with the fear of death and the threat it poses to the validity and endurance of the self, a fear that was responsible for his continuous interest in mysticism. Completing "Meditations of an Old Woman" in 1958, he had probably become aware of what threatened to be a persisten...

In the following essay, La Belle asserts that Roethke's love poems place him in the tradition of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and Dante Alighieri, among others.

Roethke remains, despite shadows of doubt about his ultimate value, a seminal voice in contemporary poetry. He must be one of the most uneven poets ever called "great" in serious critical writing. He consistently explored new territory only to retreat into the security of old and often secondhand styles. He could be as false to his deepest visions as he was to his unique voice. But if his poetry sounds with echoes from the past it also reverberates into the future. For all his occasional clums...

In the following excerpt, Jaffe highlights Roethke's strengths as a poet.

Heaney is widely considered Ireland's most accomplished contemporary poet and has often been called the greatest Irish poet since William Butler Yeats. In the following essay, which was first published in 1968, Heaney praises Roethke for adhering to his own instincts as a poet and characterizes his poetry at various stages in his career.

James is an Australian-born English critic, poet, and novelist who has written extensively about British culture and national politics but is perhaps best known for his commentaries on television and broadcast programming. Joseph Epstein, of The New York Times Book Review, has judged James "one of the brightest figures in contemporary English intellectual journalism" and the humourous and satirical qualities of his writing—including his poetry—have attracted many readers. In the...

There is a widespread emerging consensus that Roethke must be judged, along with Robert Lowell, as one of the two American poets of his generation most likely to achieve a durable, major reputation. (p. 409) For most readers the verse which best represents this poet, and which compels one to return to him again and again, is that body of poems in which a thriving microcosm is set in motion: the poems about orchids and geraniums, about bats, night crows, field mice and summer storms, about a girl thrown by h...

In the following review, Rosenthal offers tempered criticism of Words for the Wind.

A prominent figure in American literature, Schwartz created poems and stories that are deeply informed by his experiences as the son of Jewish immigrants. His verse often focuses on middle-class New York immigrant families whose children are alienated both from their parents and from American culture and society. Schwartz explored such themes as the importance of self-discovery, the necessity of maintaining hope in the presence of despair, free will versus determinism, and the machinations of the subconsci...

An American poet and critic, Kunitz won the Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for his Selected Poems, 1928-1958. His work is skillfully crafted, incorporating rhythms of natural speech, and evidencing a fine ear for the musical cadence of phrases. Often considered metaphysical, his poetry is intensely personal, exploring the mystery of self and the intricacies of time. In the following review, which originally appeared in Poetry in 1949, Kunitz enthusiastically endorses Roethke's poetic style in The Lost Son, ...

Wilbur is an American poet and critic. Respected for the craftsmanship and elegance of his verse, he employs formal poetic structures and smoothly flowing language as a response to disorder and chaos in modern life. In the following excerpt, Wilbur comments on Roethke's emulation of other poets.

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.

In the following review, Carruth judges that in The Far Field Roethke achieved qualified success.

Auden is recognized as one of the preeminent poets of the twentieth century. His poetry centers on moral issues and evidences strong political, social, and psychological orientations. In the following review, Auden hails Open House but expresses the opinion that Roethke needs to continue growing as a poet.

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...

An American poet and translator, Humphries published several volumes of verse and translated works by the Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca and the classical writers Ovid, Virgil, Juvenal, and Lucretius. In the following review, Humphries declares Open House an honest and impressive debut collection that demonstrates Roethke has much promise as a poet.

In the following excerpt, Bogan compares Roethke's poetry to that of Richard Eberhart and applauds the symbolism that Roethke employs in Praise to the End! to suggest the journey from childhood into mature consciousness.

Carruth is a well-respected and prolific American poet whose verse is frequently autobiographical, varied in mood and form, and noted for its unadorned and precise language. His literary criticism, which is collected in such volumes as Working Papers (1982) and Effluences from the Sacred Cave (1983), is recognized for its directness and tolerance. In the following review, Carruth declares Roethke's poetic voice in The Waking original.

major American lyric poet whose darkly romantic verse is characterized by her use of traditional structures, concise language, and vivid description, Bogan is recognized particularly for her honest and austere rendering of emotion. She was also a distinguished critic who served as poetry editor for the New Yorker from 1931 to 1970 and was known for her exacting standards and her penetrating analyses of many of the major poets of the twentieth century. In the following excerpt, Bogan praises The Lost Son as...

Eberhart is a highly regarded lyric poet whose verse examines fundamental questions about the nature of existence. His poems typically evoke quotidian images that illuminate conflicts between emotion and intellect, innocence and experience, chaos and order, and the spiritual and physical realms. Below, Eberhart uses the occasion of a review of Praise to the End! to extol Roethke's skill as a poet.

A pervasive interest in the poetry of Theodore Roethke is that man creates the world he perceives, hence Roethke accepts as axiomatic the reciprocity between the external, perceptible, world and the faculties of the human mind. "Interlude" develops this theme while offering a comment on the creative process itself. In the opening three lines of the poem, Roethke presents a vitalistic conception of nature, alluding unobtrusively to the physical properties of man by introducing the term "...

Scholars are indebted to Jenijoy La Belle's The Echoing Wood of Theodore Roethke … for its demonstration that Roethke's poetry, increasingly from 1951-on, issues from the poet's dramatized union with another "partner," frequently an idealized woman, a beloved traditional poet, or some fusion of both. Love is the metaphor of Roethke's amalgam, or the conception of poetry becomes synonymous with the act of love. A poem which otherwise receives scant or no menti...

[All previous readings of I Knew a Woman] have assumed the woman to be real, having bones, skin, hips, nose, and other physical attributes; all have therefore concluded, with variations, that this is a love poem with erotic overtones. None considers the woman as a personified abstraction whose flesh-and-blood realism gives power to the symbolism. The "woman" is the Art of Poetry. The poem is a mature craftman's tribute to the form of art he has come to cherish, both as a self-fulfilling...