On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 155659156X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"One of the virtues of good poetry is the fact that it irritates the mediocre."
Theodore Roethke was one of the most famous and outspoken poets and poetry teachers this country has ever known. In this volume of selected prose, Roethke articulates his commitments to imaginative possibilities, offers tender advice to young writers, and zings darts at stuffed shirts, lightweights and fools.
"Art is our defense against hysteria and death."
With the assistance of Roethke's widow, this volume has been edited to include the finest selections from out of print collections of prose and journal entries. Focused on the making and teaching of poetry,On Poetry and Craft will be prized in the classroom-and outrageous Roethke quotes will once again pepper our conversations.
"You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is."
Theodore Roethke was of an illustrious generation of poets which included Sexton, Plath, Lowell, Berryman, and like them he received nearly every major award in poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize and twice the National Book Award. In spite of his fame, he remained a legendary teacher, known for the care and attention he gave to his students, poets such as James Wright, Carolyn Kizer, Tess Gallagher, and Richard Hugo. Roethke died on August 1, 1963, while swimming in a friend's pool.
"But before I'm reduced to an absolute pulp by my own ambivalence, I must say goodbye. The old lion perisheth. Nymphs, I wish you the swoops of many fish. May your search for the abiding be forever furious."
On Poetry and Craft
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
We can't escape what we are, and I'm afraid many of my notions about verse (I haven't too many) have been conditioned by the fact that for nearly 25 years I've been trying to teach the young something about the nature of verse by writing it--and that with very little formal knowledge of the subject or previous instruction. So it's going to be lik
is implied or, particularly in the case of erotic experience, rendered obliquely. The revelation of the identity of the speaker may itself be a part of the drama; or, in some instances, in a dream sequence, his identity may merge with someone else’s, or be deliberately blurred. This struggle for spiritual identity is, of course, one of the perpetual recurrences. (This is not the same as the fight of the adolescent personality for recognition in the “real” world.) Disassociation often precedes a
good poetry is the fact that it irritates the mediocre. I can’t understand the condescension many “professional” poets have for the young. Usually it seems defensive, a form of fear or even a kind of jealousy. Uncle Easy, You mustn’t be queasy: I haven’t forgotten Cousin Rotten. Behold the heavy-footed bard With rhythms from the lumberyard. In him all the oafs, dolts, bumpkins, and clods, living and dead, connect and contend. A bewildered bardling: no real feeling except a thin intense
intact. But somehow he always survives. What’s he doing, anyway, in this company of intellectual princes? Brain Girl. The blue hair and zinc curls give you the clue, don’t they? The unhappy extrovert; a female hillbilly who learned to count. So much common sense! And what crimes she commits in its name, always making the wrong decision for the right reasons, professing a great love for ideas but actually afraid of them. A blameless public and private life; a terrible random energy. As an
boy out of the Welsh caves. But I never knew such a one. Some bubbly or Guinness or just plain beer, maybe; and not much else. We would sit around talking about poetry; about Welsh picnics; life on the Detroit river, and in Chicago (he greatly admired The Man with the Golden Arm); the early Hammett; and so on. Or maybe bumble across town to an old Marx Brothers movie, or mope along, poking into book shops or looking into store windows. One night he insisted I come along, with others, when some
something truly wonderful, almost lost from the language: the secret of being lyrically funny, the secret of being truly alive and happy. He has revived, renewed more than we know. All right, he’s father-haunted. Who isn’t? He’d be a monster if he were otherwise… I think of Cummings, not as a poet of one kind of thing, one genre, one singularity, but as one who has explored various and important and often neglected sides of modern sensibility: 1. The child’s. Here, it seems to me, he moves