Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems: (American Poets Project #16)

About this book

From the recollections of his youth in Michigan to the visionary longings of the poems written just before his death Theodore Roethke embarked on a quest to restore wholeness to a self that seemed irreparably broken. In the words of editor Edward Hirsch He courted the irrational and embraced what is most vulnerable in life. Hirschs selection and perceptive introduction illuminate the daring and intensity of a poet who in poems such as My Papas Waltz and The Lost Son reached back into the abyss of childhood in an attempt to wrest self-knowledge out of memory. Roethkes true subject was the unfathomable depths of his own being but his existential investigations were always shaped and disciplined by an exacting formal stringency as equally at ease with Yeats vigorous cadence (Four for Sir John Davies) as with the spacious Whitmanian idiom on display in the virtuoso efforts of The Far Field. This gathering of Roethkes works also includes several of his poems for children and a generous sampling from his notebook writings offering a glimpse of the poet at work with the raw materials of language and ideas. About the American Poets Project Elegantly designed in compact editions printed on acid-free paper and textually authoritative the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment selected and introduced by todays most discerning poets and critics.