[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

I've now listened to your episode on Roethke's "In a Dark Time".

It leaves a generally favourable impression, but here are a few thoughts:

1) Your metrical analysis of L1 is awry. There is no anapaest. It is iambic with the rhythmical variation of a double iamb in the first two feet (pyrrhic/spondee).
2) I'm surprised you make no direct mention of all the concrete correspondences in the poem, in both the individual stanzas - echo/echoing, purity/pure, natural/unnatural and night/night, I/I and one/One - and across the stanzas - dark (S1) with light (S3) and "Dark, dark, my light and darker" (S4); shadow/shade (S1) and shadow (S2); tearless (S3)/tearing (S4).
3) Surely the wind isn't itself crying but making us cry? You should also mention the pun of "winding" in S2 in view of the final word in the poem "wind". So "tearing wind" is a double pun.
4) The fourth line of S3 "A man goes far to find out what he is—" is especially significant as it is the only line in the poem composed of monosyllabic words. It is also a completely regular iambic line. The central line of the poem perhaps.

Cheers
Duncan