[eaf]

One of his earlier poems. There are some flaws, but I love a lot of the lines (even though the lineation seems so awkward sometimes), and it's not nearly so opaque as some of his later efforts.

Although I'm not nearly as musical as most of the folks on this site, I've generally enjoyed Roethke's poems for their sound and rhythm.

I'm not 100% sure this is the entire text, but from what I remember it seems to be complete.

-eaf


Big Wind

Where were the greenhouses going,
Lunging into the lashing
Wind driving water
So far down the river
All the faucets stopped?--
So we drained the manure-machine
For the steam plant,
Pumping the stale mixture
Into the rusty boilers,
Watching the pressure gauge
Waver over to red,
As the seams hissed
And the live steam
Drove to the far
End of the rose-house,
Where the worst wind was,
Creaking the cypress window-frames,
Cracking so much thin glass
We stayed all night,
Stuffing the holes with burlap;
But she rode it out,
That old rose-house,
She hove into the teeth of it,
The core and pith of that ugly storm,
Ploughing with her stiff prow,
Bucking into the wind-waves
That broke over the whole of her,
Flailing her sides with spray,
Flinging long strings of wet across the roof-top,
Finally veering, wearing themselves out, merely
Whistling thinly under the wind-vents;
She sailed until the calm morning,
Carrying her full cargo of roses.

[Margaret Moore]

eaf,

Really like this. The personification of the rosehouse is so unexpected and it seems to me that the rhythmical pattern fits the theme like a glove.

Also, it shows up the folly of writing by rules of thumb.

Although the overuse of present participles (or whatever you like to call these 'ing' forms) can often be overdone, they seem to me to work well here. Shall look forward to reading more Roethke here and may get round to posting some.

Margaret.

[eaf]

Another one I found pretty interesting...it's fascinating to me how such a homespun scene can be so alien. The sounds are neat, too--perhaps a bit congested, but fun nonetheless.

-eaf

Root Cellar

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

[Janet Kenny]

eaf
For me, Roethke is one of the major poets.
Thanks for these.
Janet

[Andrew Frisardi]

The sounds in Roethke's poetry often make the hair stand up on the back of my neck--Emily D.'s test for poetry. This stuff feels elemental. Thanks for posting these!
Andrew F.

[Rose Kelleher]

Yes, thanks for posting these, Ethan. They're both good, but Root Cellar is to-die-for gorgeous.

[Robert E. Jordan]

Not bad, however, my favorite by Roethke is his most famous:

"My Papa's Waltz"

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Takes me back to raising my own kids--I don't know how they survived and did so well.

Bobby


------------------
Visit Bobby's Urban Rage Poetry Page at:

www.prengineers.com/poetry

Thanks

[eaf]

Yeah, I think my favorite "famous Roethke" piece is "Dolor" -- it showed up on the earlier Roethke threads, but I figured I'd repost because I like it so much. Makes me think about how stagnant some academic environments can be.

-eaf

Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

"Dolor" is so wonderful. It begins by reminding me of a poem by Douglas Dunn called "Ode to a Paperclip" but then goes in the opposite direction. Much darker. Dunn ends by arriving at the beautiful dignity of the paperclips, also a must-read; whereas Roethke takes us to this much more frightening place...

I have an mp3 of Roethke reading "My Papa's Waltz." He reads it exactly as you'd imagine, as he writes. I'm attaching (trying to attach!) a .ram file of him reading, which is smaller than the mp3. Hope it works...

It worked! Sorry about the fuzziness.

[This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited October 31, 2004).]

[Janet Kenny]

Katy,
Thanks for that!

His voice is very different and his phrasing more fluid than I would have anticipated. It's wonderful. Somehow I always had him down as a little gruff and stern. I was very interested in the way he made no verbal attempt to enjamb the lines but let each line hang.
Janet