/ '

PO-EDIC SEQUENCES IN THEODORE ROETHKE'S

THE FAR FIELD

hy

JOHN ROBERT HOWELL, B.A.

A THESIS

IN

ENGLISH

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Technological College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Approved

August, 1968

hO^-V^^ TS

fio. II 7 CONTENTS

Ccrp- 2.

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. THE "NORTH AMERICAN" AND "MIXED" SEQUENCES 17

III. THE "METAPHY-SICAL" SEQUENCE 49

BIBLIOGRAPHY" 73

ii

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

To most critics of his work, Theodore Roethke

is a very fine poet; to some, like James Dickey—and

xmdoubtedly Ralph J. Mills, Jr., who seems to be the

most prominent Roethke critic—he is a great American

poet. What is undeniable is that Roethke has written

a considerable number of extremely powerful and moving

poems. His collected poems number about two hundred,

yet though relatively few in number they reflect the

same sort of exacting care one expects of T. S. Eliot

and Dylan Thomas; for Roethke was a craftsman of the

highest order. Despite his sudden death in I963, at

the height of his power, there is still a completeness

to his work. Indeed, he himself declared that his last

completed collection. The Far Field, would be his last

book of poems. And so it proved to be; it was published

in 1964, the year after his death.

Significantly the first poem in Roethke's first

book of poems. Open House (I94l), typifies much of the

poetry he wrote in his twenty-five year career. The

first poem was also the title poem, and Roethke was

never, it seems, able to escape its basic tenets. It

begins: "Jfy secrets cry aloud,/ I have no need for

tongue," He nearly always wrote as if he had no choice.

2

as if he could not stop his soul from singing. Then at

the beginning of stanza two he strikes another vital

chord, "ify truths are all foreknown,/ This anguish

self-revealed." The key word here is anguish, for

anguish became a dominant quality of much of his poetry,

even in his last book of poems. And in the final two

lines of this important poem he uses another word impor­

tant in xmderstanding the rest of his poetry—agony.

"Rage warps my clearest cry/ To witless agony." There

is anguish, and there is agony; in short, Roethke's

poems frequently reflect a struggle. In a review of

"Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical" James Dickey puts it

another way:

His poems are human poems in the full weight of that adjective: poems of a creature animal enough to enter half into unthinking nature and unanimal enough to be uneasy there, taking thought at what the animal half discerns and feels.^

This struggle is the primary concern of this

thesis, especially as it relates to the sequences in his

final volume of poems. The struggle Roethke fought was

not physical, such as a struggle for wealth, fetme, or

recognition; rather, it was to discover his identity, to

understand it and its relation to the whole scheme of

things. Some critics consider the struggle primarily a

Ijames Dickey, "Theodore Roethke," Poetry, CV (November 1964), p. 120.

metaphysical one. These statements represent an over­

simplification, but they do, in a general way, shed

light on all Roethke's poetry. The struggle is that

of his soul (spirit) and physical being to find the

meaning of life and to comprehend all that life includes.

As implied in the title of his last book Roethke

seems to have found some of the final answers to his

struggle in the symbol of the "far field," As early as

his third book of poems. Praise to the End, published in

1951, in the. poem "UnfoldJ Unfold]" the concept of the

field as a symbol begins to appear. Early in the poem

he states: "jl e field is no longer simple:/ It's a

soul's crosc' time," And often the crossing in his

poetry is a ] » ,,rimage or an expedition, a struggle, an

agonizing jci jy. This longing for the realization of

the far field is also reflected in part five, "They Sing,

They Sing," of "The Dying Man, in Memoriam: W. B. Yeats,"

The longing soul of the poet cries:

Descend, 0 gentlest light, descend, descend. 0 sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds. They sing, they sing, but still in minor

thirds (p. 190).2

An awareness of certain characteristics of Roethke

and his poetry helps to clarify his spiritual struggle.

The dominant element of all his poetry is, perhaps, his

All quotes in this paper except those from The Far Field come from Words for the Wind (Bloomington, 1^87:—

extreme sensitivity to nature, whether rocks, animals,

or plants. The Roethke fejnily had greenhouses and was

well-known for its flowers. This fact both provided

Roethke with much of the material for his first two

volumes of poems and helps explain his intense sensi­

tivity to nature, especially plant life. Another as­

pect that must be kept in mind is Roethke's empathy with

his subject matter. In effect,.he becomes the things he

speaks of. He doesn't merely tell about something or

describe it; he feels with it and for it. This leads to

many complex passages in his poetry, some almost inde­

cipherable. Still aaiother characteristic of most of his

poetry is the objective approach it reveals. He seldom

tells the reader how or what to think; nor does he say

specifically how he himself is thinking. What the reader

gets is a series of facts or events so arranged as to

convey the empathy with the subject the poet himself

feels. Thus one must associate the many details Roethke

gives with a particular event or object in one's own ex­

perience. To get meaning, if one chooses to call it that,

from one of Roethke's poems, one will often have to take

the same mental journey Roethke did, using the objective

details in the poems as signposts. There is, of course,

a heavy subjective influence on the arrangement of de­

tails and in the feeling involved, but the poems them­

selves are nearly always limited to objective, concrete

detail. Roethke seldom dealt in abstractions.

And one can hardly forget the many questions

Roethke asks—a factor that constitutes another specific

feature of much of his verse. As a result, since to

answer his questions would be to know the answers to

fundamental questions concerning man and his relation

to the universe and reality, answers Roethke devoted

much of his life to explore, they give Roethke's poetry

an incisiveness and insight that could hardly be obtained

any other way. These questions reveal the ineffable im­

plications of Roethke's poetic searchings, the insights

he glimpsed but could only express by asking the reader

what he had asked himself, the context of the questions

helping to point the way. Showing man where he is and

where he has yet to go, they are a special part of

Roethke's poetry.

As a consequence of these technical aspects, much

perception and spiritual insight are demanded of the

reader of Roethke's poems. This is especially true of

his well-known, experimental fourteen poem "sequence,"

published in earlier books and of many of the poems in

The Far Field. The reader must often release his mind

to this modern Virgil and be led by him to the far field,

for it is there he found many of the answers he sought.

Before treating The Far Field in detail it is best,

and in some cases necessary, to know something of

6 Roethke's development up to the time of The Far Field,

the period from about 1940 to I96I. Much, if not all,

®^ ^Q Fo r Field was written between I961 and I963, and

that period of his poetry will consequently be the pri­

mary area of concentration for this study. But the whole

context of his life is relevant.

Theodore Roethke was born in Michigan in I908, and

after graduating from Michigan State University did grad­

uate work at Harvard. He then began a career of teaching

at various universities until settling down at the Uni­

versity of Washington in 194?. Always drawn to the north

and northwest, he spent much of his life there, a factor

which influenced the imagery and subject matter of much

of his poetry. His wife, Beatrice, is still living,

Roethke's first book of poems. Open House, was

published in March of 194l, and his second. The Lost Son

and Other Poems, in 1948. The latter began a remarkable

sequence of fourteen experimental poems which he completed

in his fourth book. The Waking (1953)> which won him a

Pulitzer Prize for that year. Nine of the fourteen poems

appeared in Praise To The End, published in 1951. In

1958 he published his collected verse. Words for the Wind,

It won him several honors, most notable of which was the

National Book Award. In I96I he published 1 Ami Says

the Lamb, which included lighter poems, children's poems.

and nonsense verse. Before he died in I963 Roethke

let it be known he was working on a book of poems which

would probably be his last. As mentioned before, he

died before it was published, but when The Far Field came

out in 1964 it won Roethke posthumously his second Na­

tional Book Av/ard, His poetry career had thus spanned

nearly twenty-five years, Roethke was from first to last

a philosophical poet with an intense preoccupation with

all aspects of nature: rocks, water, trees, flowers,

weather, animals large and "minimal," man, and God.

Literally and figuratively, he left no stone unturned.

Thus the title of his last book. The Far Field, illus­

trates clearly his love of the things of nature: he

loved everything he found in the far field.

Open House is considered a good first book of

poems. Stylistically it is traditional, and more or

less so in content. But what becomes clear in the poems

are elements of Roethke's distinct nature: his love of

the bodily senses, his intense feeling, his love of

nature, and his especial love of plants and flowers.

Perhaps it was Roethke's intense feelings for these

things that was the most remarkable aspect of these

poems, an intensity that at times rivals that of Dylan

Thomas. It was, however, his second book of poems. The

Lost Son and Other Poems, that established him as an

innovator. In it appeared the title poem of his sequence.

8 "The Lost Son," undoubtedly the best of the fourteen

which constitute the whole. Its organization is certainly

clearer. In this sequence of poems, which Roethke was not

to complete until The Waking, he initiated the body-soul

struggle which he carried on through the last of his poems.

In the sequence Roethke wrote in first person, but the

"protagonist" (as Roethke calls him) in these poems is

really a child; at one point in the cycle the age of thir­

teen is mentioned. The boy in these poems is seeking to

establish his origin and identity. Thus he traces his

origin back through the ages to "sub-human" origins in

nature. Then he again begins to rediscover his identity.

Roethke said in "Open Letter," published originally in

1950: "I believe that to go forward as a spiritual man 3

it is necessary first to go back." The struggle recounted

in the fourteen poems is thus primarily a spiritual, a

metaphysical, one.

Roethke's mature style, first illustrated in The

Lost Son volume, is rather like the stream-of-consciousness

method in fiction. The poems are divided into sections,

usually three, four, or five to each poem. The poems

relate a complex series of subjectively arranged events

and images, from which emerges an increasingly defined

struggle, that for identity. Nearly always there is an

^On the Poet and His Craft; Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke, ed. by Ralph J. Mills, Jr. (SeattTe, 19^3)^ p."35^ ""Open Letter" first appeared in Mid-Century American Poets, John Ciardi, ed.

9

intense empathy with respect to all that surrounds the

poet and all that is and has been a part of his exper­

ience. But since the order in the poems is alogical, a

subjective welter of impressions, meaning is often diffi­

cult to grasp. Of the fourteen poems in the sequence

"The Lost Son," the title poem is the only one with any

sort of clearly defined order.

Each poem has a loose overall theme, and each in­

ternal section generally treats some aspect. But there is

no logical progression -and no story being told. There is

only a listing of impressions and events, and it is in

these terms the poet expresses himself empathetically and

subjectively, though employing objective detail. If one

fails tc become a part of Roethke's poems, he will never

fully understand them, for meaning cannot be extracted

neatly step by step, but only through a sort of revela­

tion when the reader himself is caught up in the current

of the poem and experiences himself the things Roethke 4

speaks of.

In 1954 Roethke published his prize-winning The

Waking. It included previously published poems and a few

new ones, the most notable of which was "Four for Sir

John Davies," a poem in four long parts. This poem

showed the influence of Davies and, more importantly, of

^See ibid., p. 42.

10 Yeats. The first section is entitled "The Dance," a

title which has obvious Yeatsian overtones. The poem ex­

plores, among other themes, love both sensual and spirit­

ual.

The Wakinp; was followed in I958 by Words for the

Wind, his collected verse at the time, though it omitted

many of his earlier poems. The book, which won the

National Book Award, is divided into two parts: "The

Waking," the poems that won him the Pulitzer Prize in

1953a and "New Poems." The new poems were largely tradi­

tional in approach, more like those in his first volume 5

and the first three parts of his second volume. The five

sections of new poems are entitled: 1) "An Interlude,"

2) "Love Poems," 3) "Voices and Creatures," 4) "The Dying

Man," 5) "Meditations of an Old Woman." The "Interlude" -

includes lighter pieces and children's verse. Among the

lighter pieces is nonsense verse, for which Roethke al­

ways had a particular liking, primarily because of its

distinct rhymes and rhythms. Rhythm was vitally important

to Roethke, hence his concern with the dance. Even in his

powerful fourteen-poem sequence cited above he included

much nonsense verse, in these instances the immature

thoughts of a child.

5part IV of The Lost Son and Other Poems contained "The Lost Son" and three other poems of the Lost Son" sequence. It was this final section of the volume that marked Roethke as an innovator.

11

The "Love Poems" in Words for the Wind are tradi­

tional but nevertheless advance many of Roethke's themes.

The section "Voices and Creatures" is varied in style

and more pessimistic. Death and evil make frequent

appearances here. The final two sections are the most

notable of the five. Actually, each is a poetic sequence

consisting of five related poems. "The Dying Man," sub­

titled "In Memorial: W. B. Yeats," in effect explores

some common themes of Yeats and Roethke, among them death

and singing. "Meditations of an Old Woman" is composed

of five internal monologues of an old woman. The tech­

nique here is somewhat similar to the one Roethke employed

in his "fourteen poem" sequence, though here closer to

stream-of-consciousness. The woman moves randomly back

and forth in time, thinking fondly of her youth and of

the present harsher realities.

In 1961 Roethke published _I Ami Says the Lamb,

which included previously published poems and new non­

sense poems. The title of the book hints at Roethke's

concern with being and identity. This overpowering joy

of being took form for Roethke in a spontaneous outpour­

ing, frequently as nonsense verse. The poems are actually

more meaningful than they are at first glance, but with

titles like "The Kitty-Cat Bird," "The Whale," "The

Chair," and "Goo-Girl," one hardly expects struggle and

agony. Indeed, these poems almost entirely reflect the

12 purely joyous side of Roethke's character, the joy of

merely being alive.

The Far Field is divided into four parts and in­

cludes only new poems. The four parts are: I "North

American Sequence," II "Love Poems," III "Mixed Sequence,"

IV "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical," As may be noted

here, Roethke uses the term sequence with some frequency.

Although his sequences do not tell a story or follow any

carefully prescribed pattern, they do explore some large

thematic area, a spiritual problem or concept, an area

which cannot readily be defined, but which represents

the totality of the import of the individual poems. The

fourteen-poem "Lost Son" sequence is an instance already

mentioned and may be examined in detail as typical.

To understand a given poem of the "Lost Son" se­

quence is not to understand or have "the key" to them

all even though the technique may be the same in each

instance. A quick reading would seem to indicate only

that the poems are all nearly alike in technique. But

as the word sequence implies, the poems hang together,

each poem exploring some aspect of the total meaning.

The poems in Roethke's sequences are broadly related and

similar, but are not mere repetition of the exact same

material. Each of Roethke's sequential poems is a

^"Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical" also appeared separately in an expensive format.

13

distinct entity and can be meaningful when read by it­

self, even out of the sequence context.

The poems in the "Lost Son" sequence were con­

ceived of and published at random intervals and not as a

whole until The Waking (1953). Only four poems of the

"Lost Son" sequence appeared in The Lost Son and Other

Poems (1948), the volume which initiated it. Nine

appeared in Praise to the End (1951) and one in The Wak­

ing (1953). In The Waking the concluding poem is simply

added to the complete sequence, which appears here as a

unit for the first time, though with some rearrangement

of the original order. For example, "The Lost Son" has

been moved from the first position to the seventh. This

final order seems to follow a simple sort of progression,

that of the maturing process. "Where Kiock is Open Wide3"

the first poem in The Waking, is childlike in style and

tends toward nonsense verse. This can be seen in an ex­

ample from part one of the poem: A kitten can Bite with his feet; Papa and Mamma Have more teeth.

Sit and play Under the rocker Until the cows All have puppies (p. 63).

The later poems become more sophisticated in style and

content, as exemplified by selection from part two of

the last poem of the sequence, "0 Thou Opening, 0":

14 The dark has its own light. A son has many fathers. Stand by a slow stream: Hear the sign of what is. Be a pleased rock On a plain day. Waking's Kissing. Yes (p. 108).

This selection also illustrates another of Roethke's

peculiar propensities: the progressively shortening line

length to end a stanza or poem. .

Any clearly logical or emotional progression in

the preceding sequence is difficult, if not impossible,

to find. In general, however, it can be said that the

poems that constitute it explore the origins and meanings

of life and the identity of the soul and self from the

point of view of a thirteen-year-old boy, covering his

life from birth to puberty.

There is another aspect of Roethke's poetry, in

addition to the sequence structure, which is particularly

evident in the three "far field" sequences. This is

Roethke's cataloging of objects, places, and events.

Roethke himself stated his inclination for this tech­

nique or "technical effect," which he called "enumera-7

tion," in "Some Remarks on Rhythm." This, of course,

places him directly in the tradition of the Whitmanian

catalog, as he himself admits. Finally, in his last

•7

Mills, 0£. cit., p. 82. This article originally appeared in Poetry XCVlI (October I96O).

15 volume Roethke used again many of the symbols and tech­

niques which were already an established part of his

thematic development.

The Far Field, then, truly represents the culmina­

tion of Roethke»s work, both poetically and thematically.

The sequence is undoubtedly his finest--and certainly

his most unique—contribution poetically, and it reaches

its full maturity in this volume. Major themes he

treated in his earlier poetry also reach a culmination

in his final volume. This is particularly true of his

metaphysical strivings and struggles. In The Far Field

he does seem to reach many of the final answers he

sought, and the book does then provide a fitting climax

to his work.

Critical comment on The Far Field and its se­

quences hat been mixed, though always generally favor­

able. Several critics contend that Praise to the End

is his peak and that if The Far Field equals it, at

least it does not surpass it. Other critics feel The

Far Field is indeed the culmination of Roethke's work.

Typical comments are the following.

John Wain contends that The Far Field is merely

a continuance of earlier themes:

With regard to subject matter. The Far Field makes no conspicuous forward move. The themes of these last poems are the themes of all Roethke's work: the interplay of human with nonhuman life, the quest for a peace and joy that represents individ­ual salvation. Once or twice there are hints of a

redistribution of emphasis: the word "God," which is not often met with in the poems of the forties and fifties, occurs more frequently here, and is evidently not used lightly; there are hints of a movement toward religious belief.8

Frederick J. Hoffman seems to feel that the work pushes

ahead to further resolutions:

The Far Field demonstrates the extent to which Roethke has defined death to himself before the summer of I963. The poems, or some of them, also testify to the agony of moving toward the threshold of death. I do not mean to say that the thought of death was constantly with him, but only that he suffered a type of "dark night" and that it was partly caused by his being unable to will a trans­cendence that he could also will to believe in.9

And Ralph J. Mills is still more lavish in his praise

than Hoffman, feeling The Far Field to go beyond any of

Roethke's previous work:

I want to call attention here to the different phases of the self's evolution as we find them treated in the last poems of The Far Field, es­pecially in those two parts of the book called North American Sequence" and "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical" in which the poet exceeds the limits of previous development and sets forth on an arduous but successful quest for mystical illumina­tion. 10

And further in the same article he says:

In The Far Field he begins to purify and purge him­self as he aims toward a union with or experience of the Divine: that process reaches its zenith in the lyrics of Sequence, Sometimes MetaphysicalJ"ll

16

°John Wain, "The Monocle of Ify Sea-Faced Uncle," Theodore Roethke: Essays on the Poetry, ed. Arnold Stein (Seattle, 19^5), p.

^"The Poetic Shape of Death," Ibid., p. IO9.

10"Roethke's Last Poems," Ibid., p. 115.

11Ibid., p. 120.

CH/VPl ER II

THE "NORTH AMERICAN" AND "MIXED" SEQUENCES

As indicated earlier. The Far Field contains

1? three sequences. '^ Using the word in the technical sense

in which Roethke held it, the first of these, "North Amer­

ican Sequence" represents, at least in part, an attempt

by Roethke to set forth, as Mills avers, "on an arduous

but successful quest for mystical illumination." And

later in his article he goes on to say:

Appropriately enough, "North American Sequence" begins in a condition of spiritual emptiness and torpor. The poet is at the nadir, sunk in a world of the senses, tormented by a hypersensitive aware­ness of physical and moral decay.13

"North American Sequence" is composed of six poems, the

first of which is "The Longing," a poem in three parts

whose very title reflects the searching, struggling atti­

tude of the poet. Part one shows the poet to be exper­

iencing a time of "sensual emptiness" when nothing excites.

Since the senses, and most of all sight, were of extreme

importance to Roethke, this lack of sensation is produced

by a spiritual wasteland. The imagery here is especially

reminiscent of the ash-heap wasteland in The Great Gatsby.

-'• Part II, "Love Poems," which is not a sequence, will not be considered in this paper.

-^^"Roethke's Last Poems," 0£. cit,, p, 120.

17

18 RoetW^e says in part one:

In a bleak time, when a week of rain is a year. The slag-heaps fume at the edge of the raw cities: The gulls wheel over their singular garbage; The great trees no longer shimmer; Not even the soot dances (p. 18?).^^

In part two of the poem Roethke seems to imagine or

dream of sensations in his longing, so much does he wish

them, and words he used over and over in his earlier

poetry reappear: rose, flame, light, bud, naked. The

poet in his mental struggle empathizes with his dreams:

The light cries out, and I am there to hear— I'd be beyond; I'd be beyond the moon.

Bare as a bud, and naked as a worm (p. l88).

In Roethke's poetry inanimate objects frequently cry

out, reflecting the poet's empathy with all of nature;

in this instance the light "cries out." In part three

the poet, in the Whitmanesque catalog tradition, lists

those things that he wishes to be a part of. He begins: I would with the fish, the blackening salmon, and

the mad lemmings. The children dancing, the flowers widening (p. l88).

and then he seems to achieve or foresee a coming-out of

the darkness and catch a glimpse of the realm of pure

delight:

A leaf, I would love the leaves, delighting in the redolent disorder of this mortal life.

This ambush, this silence. Where shadow can change into flame, and the dark be forgotten (p. l88).

l^All quotes from The Far Field are from Collected Poems (New York, I966).

19

Roethke always struggled to overcome the darkness and

find the realm of light, of "pure spirit." The darkness,

the night, was necessary, but only as a precursor, a

harbinger of the light. More will be said later about

darkness as a symbol.

The second poem, and a well-known later poem, is

"Meditation at Oyster River." In his article, "A Green­

house Eden," Louis L, Martz attempts to explain the method

involved in the poem and whole sequence:

The method of exploration followed in all these poems is basically the same as that found in 'Meditation at Oyster River" and the other poems of that later sequence: it consists of arousing, first, a flurry of images, as in one of those old glass spheres where one used to shake up a storm of snowflakes, and then watch them settle down around a clear landscape; or as in that poem by Frost where the speaker, watching the waters in a well, sees, or thinks he sees, a flash of truth at the bottom. The method may be found at work withiii the purview of a whole sequence, or within a poem in the sequence, or within a section of a poem in the sequence.15

Part one, of four parts, is a beautifully effective des­

cription of night's coming on the river, Roethke's care­

fully trained eye and ear sensitively record many de­

tails of the setting; he was ever attuned to nature:

The wind slackens, light as a moth fanning a stone: A twilight wind, light as a child's breath Turning not a leaf, not a ripple (p. I90).

But in the sleep of the night, the poet is afraid, and

•^^Theodore Roethke, op. cit., p. 31.

20

death appears "Among the shy beasts," the animals at the

river. Yet in his desire the poet asserts: "With these

would I be," and with even more, "with water." The

poet wishes to be a part of nature in spite of death's

presence.

Once again aware of the hour of coming darkness,

his empathy with the river's surroundings returns:

The flesh takes on the pure poise of the spirit. Acquires, for a time, the sandpiper's insouciance. The hummingbird's surety, the kingfisher's cunning— I shift on my rock, and I think (p. I91).

He thinks of spring's coming and the first thaw. Then

in the time of a daily cycle, the poet is reminded of

another cycle, that of the changing seasons. In part

four the poet connects the dusk with the dawn, periods

of change, periods of nature's rhythm:

Now, in this waning of light, I rock with the motion of morning (p. I9I).

Roethke then concludes the poem by saying:

In the first of the moon. All's a scattering, A shining (p. 192).

The time of coming dark becomes a time of "shining," a

time of light, for the poet has realized in the dusk

hour "the pure poise of the spirit." He has seen and

learned something of his place in the scheme of things

and expresses this, aptly, in part three when he refers

to "In this hour,/ In this first heaven of knowing."

21 The third poem of the sequence is "Journey to the

Interior." Once again the title alone suggests a striv­

ing, and the first line of this three-part poem leaves

no doubt the journey is more than merely a physical one.

The poem begins:

In the long journey out of the self. There are many detours, washed-out interrupted

raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge At the sudden veering, the moment of turning (p. 193).

The remainder of part one continues to describe a stren­

uous physical journey through rough badlands, a journey

that is both literal and symbolic. In part two of

"Journey to the Interior" more of the journey is des­

cribed, some of it on the rough roads, some on highways.

Roethke again lists the myriad details of the event—

animals, weather, a town, and plant life. Then the flash

of scenes lulls the poet to meditation; time ceases,

"time folds/ Into a long moment." And then the poet be­

comes again one with nature, in empathy with nature, in

what is now a mental journey, a mental struggling over

harsh roads:

And I hear the lichen speak. And the ivy advance with its white lizard

feet (p. 194).

The third and last part of the poem is compact and com­

plex. In the quiet time of dusk the flesh is lulled to

sleep, and the poet's soul, the "interior," becomes

: I I

22 evident. Within him are both dark and light or light

(the light of revelation) within darkness, and death

too is found there. But it is at that moment when he

is at one with himself and nature that he hears the all-

important song, the answers he seeks from the dead:

As a blind man, lifting a curtain, knov/s it is morning,

I know this change: On one side of silence there is no smile; But when I breathe with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessing. And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my

sleep (p. 195).

The fourth poem, which is in five parts, is "The

Long Waters," in part one of which the poet once again

expresses his desire for the realm of change and the

inner realm of the soul. This desire for change, for

empathy with pure being, occurs again and again in

Roethke's poetry. The realm of change, of struggle, is

closely allied to rhythms and cycles in nature and to

an extent with the dance in Yeats. Thus Roethke speaks

of his desire for things both physical and subjective,

the subjective being an empathy with nature, with:

The unsinging fields where no lungs breathe. Where light is stone (p. I96).

The final lines of this stanza describe a coastal setting

where fresh and salt water meet.

In part two the poet's contemplation of this

cyclic aspect of life causes him to think of death. He

asks protection from "the worm's advance and retreat."

23

But in the face of death he also contemplates the beauty

present: "Feeling, I still delight in my last fall."

Part three is simpler and more direct. Here Roethke is

cataloging or enumerating what he sees in the place of

the long waters, an estuary. The picture is one of decay

and desolation, which links this part with part two. The

desolate estuary has reminded Roethke of death, and again

the physical and the symbolic and subjective are joined.

Part four describes the "landlocked bay" in the

early morning, when all would seem to be quiet and peace­

ful, but the scene is still one of a foreboding desola­

tion. The waves are smooth, graceful, and gentle, but

an ominous atmosphere pervades:

V/here impulse no longer dictates, nor the darkening shadow,

A vulnerable place, Cv.rrounded by sand, broken shells, the

wreckage of water (p. 197).

At the beginning of part five it is again evening, and

the setting has sparked anew desire within him. Then

again the cyclic rhythm of life asserts itself:

I see in the advancing and retreating waters

The shape that came from my sleep, weeping (p. I98).

The latter portion of part five unites and sums up the

whole poem. The poet has returned from another visionary

and spiritual journey: I, who came back from the depths laughing too loudly. Become another thing; Ify eyes extend beyond the farthest bloom of the waves; I lose and find myself in the long water;

24 I am gathered together once again; I embrace the world (p. I98).

This poem and "Meditation at Oyster River" are thus

similar in approach, content, and technique.

The long fifth poem of the sequence is the title

poem of the volume, "The Far Field." Once again the

journeying, striving theme is made clear early in this

four-part poem. In this poem, says Louis Martz, "the

mind recovers completely its early sense of unity with

natural things." It begins quite plainly: "I dream

of journeys repeatedly." In this short first part the

poet drives along a peninsula until he is off the high­

way, and even off the rubble of what is perhaps an old

trail; he drives until he is stuck in sand and snow and

can go no further. This physical journey symbolizes

his journey within, to "the interior" of his soul, push­

ing to mental and spiritual limits in his search for

answers.

The long second part is really quite compact, for

in it Roethke manages to describe the far, secluded field.

What also becomes evident is that the physical field is a

microcosm and a symbol of eternity. Early in this part

there are images of death: "tin cans, tires, rusted pipes,

broken machinery," a dead rat, and a cat with its entrails

•*-"A Greenhouse Eden," ibid., p. 17.

25 blown out by the niglit watchman. But the poet is quick

to point out: "my grief was not excessive," since in

the far field are all the birds with their varying colors

and songs. Then there are references to reincarnation,

still another type of cycle. All is there in the far

field—eternity, timeless cycles:

I learned not to fear infinity. The far field, the windy cliffs of forever. The dying of time in the white light of

tomorrow (p. 200).

In part three a river again catches the poet's eye.

Though it is not perfectly clear from the poem, the

river seems to remind him again of death:

I have come to a still, but not a deep center A point outside the glittering current (p. 201).

This may refer to the point of death. But death seems

only another part of a cycle, a cycle which could lead

only to rebirth. Perhaps this is why Roethke says:

I am renewed by death, thought of my death. The dry scent of a dying garden in

September (p. 201).

Almost a nutshell condensation of Roethke's

philosophy, part four is concise and powerful. The

reader discovers that not only is the far field a

microcosm, but also man himself, in this instance the

poet. This can be better understood when one remembers

Roethke's intense empathy with all of nature; he tends

to become himself the things he sees and hears. • In this

trip to the far field Roethke thus discovers his own

26 immensity and kinship with all of existence:

A man faced with his own immensity Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.

• . . .

He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude: . . . .

Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory in one man,— A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world (p. 201).

Many physical trips have been taken in these

poems—Oyster River, the landlocked estuary, the far

field—each different in purely physical terms. But each

is also, on a symbolic level, a journey, a struggle, into

the soul, into the "final man." That is where Roethke

finds his answers, but of course he sees these answers in

the world about him. The world to him is a symbol of the

soul; explain man and nature, he would say, and you have -

explained the soul.

The final,poem in the first sequence, "The Rose,"

is the longest and, like "The Far Field," is also in four

parts. Roethke is always quick to make location clear.

The setting is once again the landlocked estuary of "The

Long Waters," and dusk is falling. It becomes clear

that times and places of change are important to

Roethke, perhaps because of what they reveal, perhaps

because they are indicative of the rhythm and cycle in

nature. One recalls the frequent references to dusk and

dawn in this whole sequence. In the first part of "The

27 Rose" there are two types of change present: the

estuary where salt and fresh water meet and the coming

of darkness. The poet ponders the dark and silence:

I svray outside myself

Into the darkening currents (p. 202),

Part two begins by describing the rhythm of a

ship, and as a ship, says Roethke, so "Our motion con­

tinues." But in contrast is the wild sea rose he finds

at the edge of the sea; it, unlike him, is stable, an

absolute in nature. The rose seems akin to the eremite

star of Keats and Frost, or, as Mart? suggests in his

article, to various of Eliot's rose :> ,es. And then

in his contemplation the roses draw h n;i back to child­

hood and his father's huge greenhouses and roses, and he

recalls that even then the roses "seemed to flow toward

me, to beckon me, only a child, out of myself." Part

two is concluded with two weighty lines, one of Roethke's

incisive questions, set apart:

What need for heaven, then.

With that man, and those roses (p. 203)?

In part three the poet neglects for a moment the

rose and seeks to answer the question he poses in this

part's first line, a question whose relevance he makes

clear in the poem's culminating fourth part: "What do

they tell us, sound and silence?" Roethke then enumer­

ates many "American sounds," but returns to the "twitter­

ing of swallows above water." When that sound, symbolic­

ally a sound of the spirit, causes light to enter the

28

sleeping soul and "the mind remembers all," then, he

concludes, "Beautiful my desire, and the place of my

desire," His striving for an understanding of man,

nature, the universe, the soul, is then fulfilled. The

remainder of part three emphasizes that there are really

two types of sounds, those heard by the ears and those

heard by the soul. The physical sounds, it seems, evoke

the latter, which take the form of light entering the

soul, "I think of the rock singing, and light making

its own silence," the poet says. These are soul sounds

or, to use the title of a current song, the sounds of

silence, of a meditative mind.

In part four, perhaps the most powerful portion

of any of these poems and certainly one of the most beau­

tiful and moving, Roethke returns to his rose:

Near this rose, in this grove of sun-parched, wind-warped madronas.

Among the half-dead trees, I came upon the true ease of myself.

As if another man appeared out of the depths of my being.

And I stood outside myself. Beyond becoming and perishing, A Something wholly other. As if I swayed out on the wildest wave alive. And yet was still. And I rejoiced in being what I was:

. . . .

And in this rose, this rose in the sea-wind. Rooted in stone, keeping the whole of light. Gathering to itself sound and silence--Mine and the sea-wind's (p. 205).

Indeed the rose's presence has so moved him that he is

29

two men, one presumably his physical self, the other

his soul-self. The rhythmic image is also present again;

the other self is in perfect empathy with nature and thus

"dances" to her timeless cadences. He was motionless

physically, yet his soul was alive and vibrant. The rose

thus seems to be a symbol for man and Roethke himself,

for it keeps "the whole of light," which is what Roethke

most diligently seeks. Light here seems to include both

sound and silence, the world physical and metaphysical,

object and symbol.

It is obvious the poems of the "North American

Sequence" are diverse, yet united by common themes.

Each of the six poems "takes place" in a nature setting

and often includes a journey. In each poem, too, the

symbolic parallels of the physical aescriptions are made

clear; i.e., it is evident that the real purpose in

these poems is to explore man's inner self, his soul.

In effect, Roethke shows the reader that nature is

really but a symbol of man's soul, that v/hen one truly

perceives nature he concomitantly learns of his own self.

Thus the journey and exploration in each of these poems

is a journey into the poet's own self and, by extension,

into the self or soul of all men.

The second major section of Roethke's book, "Mixed

Sequence," consists of seventeen poems, almost three times

the number in "North American Sequence"; yet all but a

30 couple of the poems are much shorter; only five are

divided into numbered parts. And whereas each poem in

"North American Sequence" could be termed major, most

in "Mixed Sequence" are minor. Tone and content in this

sequence are varied; thus the adjective "mixed" is

appropriate.

The first poem, "The Abyss," is quite long, con­

sisting of five parts, and is the major poem of the

sequence. John Wain describes it briefly in his article:

"The Abyss," for instance, a very moving poem which describes the dark downward journey into the pit of a mental breakdown, has a definitely religious tinge in the sections that describe the slow, wavering. but joyful ascent back to stability and freedom.17

Roethke used the word "abyss" in at least one other ear­

lier poem, "The Pure Fury," in Words for the Wind:

I live near the abyss. I hope to stay Until mj'- eyes look at a brighter sun

As th^ thick shade of the long night comes on (p. I58).

The edge of the abyss is another of those points of

change, like dusk or dawn: here it is the edge between

darkness and light, or their symbolic equivalent. In

his article, "Roethke's Last Poems," Ralph J, Mills des­

cribes the edge as "that precarious border in Roethke's

poems between ecstasy and the void."-^^ In the above pas­

sage the abyss is associated with "the long night," which

17"The Monocle of My Sea-Faced Uncle," Ibid., p. 72.

l^Ibid,, p. 127.

31 could be death itself, the dark night of the soul,

the unknown, or the place of internal struggling and

agony before the light." ^ Roethke's ambiguity is fre­

quently hard to resolve.

Part one of the poem implies that the abyss is

ever near, a present possibility, if not a present

reality:

And the abyss? the abyss? The abyss you can't miss: It lis right where you are— A step down the stair (p. 219).

In part two the poet indicates that he has had a brush

with death, and "the terrible hunger for objects quails

me." He even evokes the great enumerator: "Be with me.

Whitman, maker of catalogues." Death would appear to be

one part of the abyss which faces the poet, and with the

coming of death he loses his grasp upon objects and lofti­

ness of thought. He becomes a lowly creature:

A furred caterpillar crawls down a string. My symbol] For I have moved closer to death, lived with

death (p. 220).

Part three, brilliant and beautiful, reveals more

about the abyss. In this part, too, Roethke tells of the

agony of his learning and struggle:

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit; Too close immediacy an exhaustion:

%he dark night of the soul as it functions in Roethke's poetry will be further explained in the dis­cussion of "In a Dark Time" in "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical."

32 As when the door swings open in a florist's

storeroom— The rush of smells strikes like a cold fire, the

throat freezes. And we turn back to the heat of August, Chastened. So the abyss— The slippery cold heights. After the blinding misery. The climbing, the endless turning. Strike like a fire, A terrible violence of creation, A flash into the burning heart of the abominable; Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant. The burning lake turns into a forest pool. The fire subsides into rings of water, A sunlit silence (p. 221).

The abyss in this passage is a time of purgation, "the

pure fury" of the spirit, the place beyond the pale of

death, of mere worldly phenomena. If the violence and

agony of the abyss are endured a sv/eetness will unfold.

This concept brings to mind the final lines of "The Lost

Son":

A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait (p. 85).

The "sunlit silence," the light, does not, however, come

painlessly. Pure reality seems too much to bear. In

part three it is so pure, so condensed, so unbearably

strong, that it becomes black, takes the form of the

abyss. But endured for a time, it resolves itself, its

fires die, and the white light of silence is revealed.

In part four the poet begins by acknowledging his

desire for dreams and the realm of meditation. He

. > ' desires only pure being where "Kiiowing slows for a

moment/ And not-knowing enters, silent," He dosires

the realm of pure empathy. In his exploration of his

soul he nears the vital truths he desires, yet paradox­

ically the realm of darkness, the abyss, is also the

place of the quiet light where the conflicts are re­

solved. The further he enters into the darkness, the

nearer he comes to the still light of the center:

I rock between dark and dark, Ify soul nearly my ov/n, Ify dead selves singing. And I embrace this calm— Such quiet under the small leaves]— Near the stem, whiter at root, A luminous stillness (p. 221).

The final portion of the poem, part five, is

short and moderately joyful. It would seem that the

poet has resolved the problems of the abyss and emerged

into the desired realm of pure "being." He begins by

saying, "I thirst by day. I watch by night." This

statement recalls the poems of "North American Sequence,"

and the lines that follow bear this out. These last lines

of the poem are joyous, a soul's singing:

I am most immoderately married: The Lord God has taken my heaviness away; I have merged, like the bird, with the bright day. And my thought flies to the place by the bo-tree.

Being, not doing, is my first joy (p. 222).

Whatever the problems of the abyss they have been, at

least for a time, resolved.

The abyss is thus no simple, clearly defined image

34 or symbol. It becomes a symbol for all times of trial,

whether death, the contemplation of man's place in reality,

or the searchings of the soul. It is the place where a

man is stripped of all pretense and sham, where man is

faced with being itself and discovers the resulting

"luminous stillness." The abyss can be experienced at

any time, many times, and under different circumstances,

for it is the shade that is ever with us.

The second poem of this sequence, called simply

"Elegy," is much shorter than "The Abyss" and altogether

different in content. The person eulogized is a woman

named Aunt Tilly, and again Roethke is listing information

about her. In "Elegy," a poem of five irregular stanzas,

he has picked those various qualities that best illustrate

Tilly's character. In direct contrast to "The Abyss," the \; r"

description in this poem is direct, simple, and delicately Jf r" r

revealing: ['

I recall how she harried the children away all the late summer

From the one beautiful thing in her yard, the peach-tree;

How she kept the wizened, the fallen, the misshapen for herself.

And picked and pickled the best, to be left on rickety doorsteps (p. 223).

Aunt Tilly was at harmony with being:

Sighs, sighs, who says they have sequence? Between the spirit and the flesh—what war? She never knew (p. 223).

The next poem is "Otto," which consists of four

nearly regular stanzas, three of eleven lines and the

r

35 last of nine. The poerr is a reminiscence of Otto and

of other figures of th .oyts past, including his father.

Otto was a Prussian florist, probably a worker in the

Roethke greenhouses, and is also the name of Roethke»s

father. In stanza one we leam Otto is a direct man,

not given to subtleties. "He potted plants as if he hated

them," but the result was that the plants always grew and

"their bloom extended him." He apparently put much of

himself into his work and, like Aunt Tilly, loved life.

Stanza two reinforces this idea. The poet here relates

a story of what Otto did to two poachers he once caught.

After firing a warning shot he walked up to and slapped

them both:

It was no random act, for those two men Had slaughtered game, and cut young fir trees

down (p, 224),

Otto had the reverence for life, which Roethke deeply

valued.

Stanza three explores the local group of Germans

who were florists, which would include Otto. Roethke

questions why they built so many greenhouses. Yet they

were violent men too; they killed cats who came too near

their pheasant runs:

Who loves the small can be both saint and boor, (And some grow out of shape, their seed impure;) The Indians loved him, and the Polish poor (p. 225).

The last stanza laments the lost world of his father and

the other German florists. It is the coming of dawn which

recalls the scene. Dawn and dusk are Roethke's times of

trial. The poem thus laments "lost, violent souls" of

the past, roan close to nature. Otto is like Aunt Tilly,

and the qualities Roethke admires in them are those he

values in all people.

The next poems are somevrhat miscellaneous in

nature. "The Chums" is a wistful recollection of past

friends and their sisters. The only notable connection

betv/een this minor poem and the,previous tv70 poems is

that all three are reminiscences about people. "The

Lizard" is a more significant poem and the first of the

sequence about an animal, and is one of many excellent

poems about various types of animal life. In "The

Lizard" Roethke relates an encounter with a lizard on

a terrace, and once again he provides all the necessary

and relevant detail. Then he is led to the crux of the

matter:

To whom does this terrace belong?— With its limestone crumbling into fine greyish dust. Its bevy of bees, and its wind-beaten rickety

sunchairs. Not to me, but this lizard. Older than I, or the cockroach (p, 226),

The lizard is at one with his environment, and it is his

by right of his being there the longest. This simple

meeting again shows Roethke's extreme sensitivity to

nature,

"The Meadow Mouse" is even more empathetic, re­

flecting the poet's own suffering with nature's animals.

The poem is in two irregular parts, the first telling

37 about the finding of a baby field mouse. The poet brings

it home with him, feeds it, and gives it a shoe-box home,

hoping the little fellow will be even unafraid by then:

Do I imagine he no longer trembles When I come close to him?

He seems no longer to tremble (p. 227).

But one morning (perhaps the next after it was found) the

box is empty, and the poet questions the mode of its going,

fearing danger from the hawk, owl, shrike, snake, or tom­

cat. Then the tiny mouse's danger causes him to think of

all helpless creatures; their struggles are in effect his: I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass. The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway. The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising--All things innocent, hapless, forsaken (p. 227).

The next poem is "Heard in a Violent Ward," and

is another short, minor poem. It best explains itself.

The poets mentioned are some of Roethke's favorites:

In heaven, too. You'd be institutionalized. But that's all right,— If they let you eat and swear With the likes of Blake, And Christopher Smart, And that sweet man, John Clare (p. 228).

Being a violent, vital part of things was always important

to Roethke,

"The Geranium" illustrates another facet of

Roethke's empathy with nature, this time with plant life.

The humor of the poem is itself deeply touching. The

poet stuck the bedraggled plant out by the garbage can

once, but the pitiful sight made him bring it back in:

38 She looked so limp and bedraggled. So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle. Or a wizened aster in late September, I brought her back in again For a new routine (p. 228).

The poor plant had lived too long on "gin, bobbie pins,

half-smoked cigars, dead beer." But it apparently en­

dured until the maid threw it out:

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me— And that was scary— So when that snuffling cretin of a maid Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can, I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, I was that lonely (p. 228).

Roethke was like Albert Schweitzer in his intensive

reverence for life. Nothing was too insignificant or

humble for either of them.

The "mixed" quality of the sequence is further

illustrated by other poems that it contains. "On the

Quay" is concerned with nature's fury on the oceans.

"The Storm" also discusses nature's fury, this time in

a more substantial three-part poem. Part one describes

the storm's coming, employing once again detailed enumer­

ation. All the people have taken shelter; "There is one

light on the mountain." Part two contains a beautifully

realistic description of the growing storm and its effects.

Finally the poet himself and "the last watcher" are driven

indoors by the fury, able only then to breathe more eas­

ily, while the storm's increase moves "the cardplayers

'k,

39 closer/ To their cards, their anisette."

In part three the storm's ultimate fury is antici­

pated and even strongly hoped for. He and presumably

his wife are in bed, lying "closer to the gritty pillow,"

waiting it out. But the poet is hoping:

For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater.

The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell. The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses. And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the

living pine-tree (p. 231).

The poet, it would seem, gets the same thrill from the

storm's pure fury that he gets from the still contempla­

tions of dusk. The raging is what Roethke desired; he

heard the storm without and felt its timeless raging

within.

"The Thing" reveals still another and more ominous

side of nature. The setting is a picnic, V7ith more than

one person present. During the picnic a "thing," pre­

sumably a bird of some sort, is seen being chased by

some other birds, "the implacable swift pursuers." The

thing escapes for a minute in the sun, but the pursuers

regain the trail. Then one by one they strike:

Until there was nothing left.

Not even feathers from so far away (p. 232).

The poet then turns again to the picnic. This small tab­

leau illustrates the life-death cycle in nature. There

is, of course, a touch of regret and sadness in the small,

though tragic, situation, for its implications spread like

. - _ 40 rippies from a stone throv/n in water. This struggle

for survival is universal, affecting all life forms.

This the poet realizes and the last line hints: "And

the blue air darkened." A hush of regret had settled

over the poet's thoughts.

The theme in the next poem, "The Pike," is sim­

ilar to that in "The Thing." Roethke first describes a

peaceful setting, which translated symbolically is much

like the still part of the soul:

The river turns. Leaving a place for the eye to rest, A furred, a rocky pool, A bottom of water (p. 233).

Roethke then catalogs the many wonders he sees there,

thinking:

I lean, and love these manifold shapes. Until, out from a dark cove. From beyond the end of a mossy log. With one sinuous ripple, then a rush, A thrashing-up of the whole pool. The pike strikes (p. 233).

The pike is the violent reality that forces us to leave

our dreams and meditations. It also represents the wild

viciousness of nature, the fury one finds even in the

realm of contemplation. Thus in one simple, universal

setting both the peaceful and the violent interest, as

at dusk and da\m when light and darkness conflict.

In contrast to the violence and tragedy of the

past several poems, "All Morning" comes as a pleasant,

joyous change, a change similar to the joyous ending of

'Ifn\ «1 II ^ JL

The Abyss. In this poem, rich with detail, the sub­

ject is birds, and the poet first concentrates with con­

siderable exactness on two varieties that frequent his

yard: the wood pigeon and the Stellar jay. One knows

that Roethke must have been intimately familiar with

these birds. Then wrens, chickadees, ducks, humming

birds, and gulls are mentioned as other visitors to the

yard. "A delirium of birds]" Roethke describes them.

But it is then that he makes his discovery, and Whitman­

esque detail again assails the reader: It is neither spring nor summer: it is Alv/ays, With towhees, finches, chickadees, California

quail, wood doves. With wrens, sparrows, juncos, cedar waxwings,

flickers. With Baltimore orioles, Michigan bobolinks. And those birds forever dead. The passenger pigeon, the great auk, the Carolina

paraquet. All birds remembered, 0 never forgotten] All in my yard, of a perpetual Sunday, All morning] All morning] (p. 235).

Much as Roethke becomes an Everyman in his evening con­

templations, so does one bird in its almost helpless

empathy with its surroundings become the symbol of all

birds past and present. How beautifully and inextricably

linked are the creatures of nature, a factor influencing

in part Roethke's expression of joy.

"The Manifestation" is a short, but neatly turned,

poem. It praises merely being, the same joy Roethke ex­

presses in "All Morning":

^2 the tree becoming

Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough, A seed pushing itself beyond itself. The mole making its way through darkest

ground (p. 238).

These are the sorts of activities the pedestrian eye

sees as nothing more than everyday occurrences; to

Roethke they were the very essence of being itself.

The simplest activity was a marvel in itself. Roethke

lists other common occurrences, then points out that

doing the natural thing is all that can be asked of us:

What does v;hat it should do needs nothing more. The body moves, though slovfly, toward desire.

We come to something without knowing why (p. 235).

This humble, unpretentious attitude gave Roethke the rare

joie de vivre he found in everything. The manifestation

of being itself is the light one finds as he arises from

the agony of the abyss.

Like "The Manifestation," the next poem, "Song" is

short and seemingly simple, but the questions asked in the

poem are typically Roethkean and fundamental and their

answers ambiguous and provocative. The answers themselves

seem to be born of anguish and experience. They show

Roethke's ears, eyes, and mind at work. The first ques­

tion the poet asks is "From whence cometh song?" and the

answers:

From the tear, far away. From the hound giving tongue. From the quarry's weak cry (p. 236).

The tear is of a distant sorrovi, perhaps, the hound's bay

43 the song of the hunter, and the cry of the weak the

anguish of "all things innocent, hapless, forsaken."

The second question is "From whence, love?" And

the three answers:

From the dirt in the street. From the bolt, stuck in its groove. From the cur at my feet (p. 236).

This is Roethke's perceptive, enumerative way of saying

that love is where one finds it; love is everywhere. How

simple and unpretentious are these sources of love, not

Platonic, but material.

"Whence, death?" is the short, trenchant, final

question. And the answers are:

Prom dire hell's mouth. From the ghost without breath. The wind shifting south (p. 236).

The abyss is one form of hell; the breathless ghost is

merely a state of lifelessness. The shifting wind implies

in terms of the previous poems a time of change, such as

dusk and dawn. Death is not an end, but a part of the

endless cycle.

"The Tranced" is a poem in five numbered stanzas,

each of five lines. Again first person plural is used,

•as in "The Manifestation" and "The Storm," but again the

antecedents of the pronoun are not perfectly clear,

though the people in the poem are probably the poet and

his wife. On the simplest level the tranced are held

by a flame's magic, but symbolically by being itself.

thoughts of the soul, the quiet light. Entranced by

the flame (stanza one) the abode of "The Questioner,"

probably an equivalent for God, is questioned. Then

the poet asks:

When we abide yet go Do we do more than we know Or is the body but a motion in a shoe (p. 237)?

He seems to be saying, "Is the body the end of all, or in

the realm of contemplation are we more than we seem, a

person outside of the motion in a shoe?" The body abides,

but thoughts fly in meditation.

Stanza two begins:

The edge of heaven was sharper than a sword; Divinity itself malign, absurd (p. 237).

Roethke is saying here that the edge of heaven, the time

and place of change, the edge of the abyss, is almost

more than we can bear. Even Divinity itself suffers and

becomes distorted at the edge, the becoming. But in

spite of this, the poet says:

love-longing of a kind Rose up within the mind. Rose up and fell like an erratic wind (p. 237).

Roethke v;as never able to escape desire and the longing

for the far fields; it flowed within him like his pulsing

blood. And here again is the image of the dance, the

heart of being, the object of Roethke's search. Stanza

three describes further the paradoxical abiding, yet

going:

45 We struggled out of sensuality;

Going, we stayed; and night turned into day (p. 237).

The struggle and striving are evident. The realm of con­

templation, of the soul, has been penetrated. The scene

is one of light, if not of implied joy and freedom. The

tone is similar to that evident when the poet arose from

the abyss in part five of "The Abyss."

In part four the tranced become the vision. "Sub­

ject and object sang and danced as one." The state of

becoming is past for a moment, and purity of experience

prevails:

Slowly we moved between The unseen and the seen. Our bodies light, and lighted by the moon (p. 237).

For a moment they exist in a dual nature, as both soul

and body. Yet even the soul self has its struggle, an

agony of self-realization. "Our small souls hid from

their small agonies." But the "love-longing," Roethke

says, is a rising, implying that the abyss can be risen

from, that the struggles are not forever:

Being, we came to be Part of eternity.

And what died with us was the will to die (p. 238).

The struggle and agony are to he_, and that accomplished,

eternity becomes a reality. The world's pressures are

then bearable, though death has not been cheated.

Roethke, it seems here, fears that death is the end of

all. He is not sure; he fights the thought; but he does

46 not welcome death, not a man who derived so much pleasure

from the senses.

The final poem of "Mixed Sequence" is "The

Moment," and it climaxes the entire sequence, as indeed

it should. It is similar in tone to the concluding part

of "The Abyss." The poem is the exaltation after a

struggle; it culminates all the struggles of this se­

quence, of "North American Sequence," and of the striving

in other of Roethke's poems. "The Moment" refers to that

moment of pure realization of soul or being, the glimpse

of eternity witnessed in the previous poem. It begins,

"We passed the ice of pain." For a moment, at any rate,

the struggles of the self and the agony have been cul­

minated, so much so that the "we" are one with even the

abys s:

The wide, the bleak abyss

Shifted with our slov; kiss (p. 238).

Stanza two of the poem shows the struggle also to be one

between the relative human situation and the absolute: Space struggled with time; The gong of midnight struck The naked absolute (p. 238).

The moment was a realization of the absolute and thus of

eternity, a state of empathy: "All flowed: without,

within." No more need be said:

What else to say? We end in joy (p. 238).

So from the darkness of the first poem of the sequence.

47 "The Abyss," we come to the state of pure joy in the last

poem.

At first glance the poems of the "mixed sequence"

may seem to be a hodge-podge of unrelated elements. It

is true that they are not always closely related in con­

tent, theme, and style, but certain threads of thought

and other similarities do help unify them. For instance,

all of the poems are connected with some aspect of nature:

people ("Elegy," "Otto," "The Chums," "Heard in a Violent

Ward," "The Tranced," and "The Moment"); animals ("The

Lizard," "The Meadow Mouse," "The Thing," "The Pike," and

"All Morning"); and elements of all ("The Abyss," "The

Manifestation," and "Song"), The totality of these ele­

ments together comprise the absolute, i,e., are symbols

for the absolute; they are v:hat Roethke searched for and.

found in Lhe far field of his mind. Taken as a whole

these poems explore the meaning of the absolute and

illustrate Roethke's effort to resolve the struggle be­

tween the body and soul, the relative and absolute. Each

of these poems functions both literally and symbolically.

In short, they reflect stages of Roethke's own rising

from the abyss. There is love ("Elegy," "The Meadow

Mouse," "The Geranium"—human, animal, plant); violence

("Heard in a Violent Ward," "The Storm," "The Pike"--

human, nature, animal); and joy ("All Morning," "The

Tranced," and "The Moment"). These poems actually

48 overlap in a very complex m.anner.

One might also note from the discussion of the

poems how poems of similar subject matter are grouped

together, such as people in "Elegy," "Otto," and "The

Chums" and violence in "On the Quay," "The Storm," "The

Thing," and "The Pike." In reality, despite its title,

"Mixed Sequence," this is far from any random grouping

of poems. Roethke seems to follow a very careful pro­

gression from "The Abyss" to "The Moment." In between

are steps along the often agonizing, sometimes joyous,

way. Each poem thus characterizes an element of the

over-all mental journey.

:i

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CM

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CHAPTER III

THE "METAPHTSICAL" SEQUENCE

The final sequence of the book is twelve poems

titled "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical." These poems

represent the culmination of a long and distinguished

career. According to Ralph J. Mills:

The "Long Waters" and the visionary lyrics of "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical" exemplify the last stage in the long metamorphosis of the self that Roethke attained in his poetry. This funda­mental theme gave his work unity and yet never restricted the astonishing variety, inventions, and artistry of which he was capable.20

And in his article "Roethke's Last Poems" he says:

The spare, and more formal, character of the lyrics in "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical" parallels the further stage of visionary experience they embody, for at this point the focus of activity is almost entirely inv/ard or spiritual and considerations of externc'.l reality are, at best, secondary.21

The first poem is doubtless the best knoi'jn of

this sequence, and perhaps the best knovm of the entire

volume. "In a Dark Time" was the poem discussed in a

symposium, which appeared in The Contemporary Poet as

Artist and Critic, and was first published in I96I in

New World Writing" (XIX), both edited by Anthony Ostroff,

This discussion thus appeared about three years before

The Far Field was published. It included comments by

^ 20 Contemporary American Poetry (New York, I965),

p. 70.

2^Theodore Roethke, op. cit., pp. II6-II7.

49

T 50

Jolin Crowe Ransom, Babette Deutsch, and Stanley Kunitz,

and a reply by Roethke himself. "In a Dark Time" is

undoubtedly the most important poem of the sequence.

It is in four regular stanzas of six lines each, with

lines generally iambic pentameter. The poem originally

appeared with each st.iza numbered, but in The Far Field

the numbers have been removed to, probably, the better­

ment of the poem. "In a Dark Time" is similar in many

ways to "The Abyss," and the dark time and the abyss

are similar symbols. First of all, it is apparent in

this and similar poems, such as "The Abyss," that the

dark time is Roethke's own "dark night of the soul." In

poems as early as "The Lost Son Sequence" there are hints

of this experience, but there are few doubts in "Sequence,

Sometimes Metaphysical" and "In a Dark Time." In his

article "The Poetic Shape of Death," Frederick J. Hoffman

explains the dark time: The "dark time" has several applications: to the darkness of "underness" which he found everywhere; to the darkness of despair that came to him v/hen he found that he had alone both to define and to defend himself; and, of course, to the time of death, of what he calls "the deepening shade" and "the echoing wood."22

Then as if to tidy up any speculative and pedantic loose

ends, Roethke himself confirms in a couple of articles

the truth of this assertion, in one of which he remarks:

22lbid., p. 111.

51 I take the central experience to be fairly common: to break from the bondage of the self, from the barriers of the "real" world, to come as close to God as possible.^-J

Thus it is evident this poem reflects Roethke's dark

night of the soul.

"Open Letter" was an attempt by Roethke to explain

the "Lost Son" sequence. Owing to some overlapping of

themes in this sequence and the three in The Far Field

some of the comments he made then are still valid with

respect to his last poetry. And a few of his remarks in

"Open Letter" are particularly arresting in light of "The

Abyss" and "In a Dark Time":

Some of these pieces, then^ begin in the mire; as if man is no more than a shape writhing from the old rock. This may be due, in part, to the Mich­igan from which I come. Sometimes one gets the feeling that not even the animals have been there before; but the marsh, the mire, the Void, is always there, immediate and terrifying. It is a splendid place for schooling in the spirit. It is America.

None the less, in spite of all the muck and welter, the dark, the dreck of these poems, I count myself among the happy poets.24

This explains much of the striving and agony in Roethke's

poems. In "The Vigil," part four of "Four for Sir John

Davies," he puts it another way: "We dared the dark to

reach the white and warm." That statement is almost the

essence of Roethke's poetry.

23The Contemporary Poet as Artist and Critic, ed. Anthony Ostroff (Boston, 1964), p. 49.

24 On the Poet and His Craft, op. cit., p. 40.

_, 52

The statement from "Open Letter" also explains

the seeming light in darkness, joy in agony paradox of

many of his poems. The joy is not the agony, nor is the

light the darkness, but the former are derived from the

latter. When darkness and agony have been fairly met,

then come light and joy. But in the becoming the two

are often so complexly mingled they seem one. Within

the focus of the mind's eye, so to speak, they cannot

be immediately resolved and thus made to seem one. As

Yeats said, in a different context, "How can ve know the

dancer from the dance?" The darkness and light are not

the same, but in the whirl of striving and becoming, they

blur and confuse.

Roethke begins the poem with this same paradox:

"In a dark time the eye begins to see," as much as to

say that hard as it may be the goal m3y be reached only through struggle. Ralph J. Mills comments on this need

for the negative experience:

in the last poems, where the intention to achieve mystical illumination is more sustained, this neg­ative experience becomes more terrifying and, if it is possible, more purposive.25

In line two Roethke says: "I meet my shadow in the deepen­

ing shade." In his reply (to the symposium) on this poem

he explains the shade is his "Other," perhaps his soul

25"Roethke's Last Poems," 0£. cit., p. 119.

self. In the remainder of the stanza the poet tries

to explain the feeling of this "meeting." In stanza two

the agony becomes clearer:

The day's on fire] I know the purity of pure despair, Ify shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks—is it a cave. Or winding path? The edge is what I have (p. 239).

Roethke said, "the day is on fire" referred to a mental

fire which was "the ultimate burning of revelation." The

question, however, implies that much remains to be learned.

His comments on "the edge" are quite revealing. "The cave

and winding path are older than history. And the edge—

27 the terrible abyss—equally old." . At this point des­pair still prevails.

Stanza three describes a time of conflict and up­

heaval. "A steady storm of correspondences!" it begins.-

The poet is forced to find meaning in the surface level

of things, to go beyond the merely obvious. Most of

Roethke's poetry is an attempt to do this:

A man goes far to find out what he is— Death of the self in a long, tear?( -s night.

All natural shapes blazing unnatui ." light (p. 239).

The self that dies is the human, anima3 self, that the

soul self—the corresponding mental self—might be re­

vealed. The unnatural light is undoubtedly the revealed

I I I *

• • : : ! •

: ;.t; till 11

in

26 p . 50.

See The Contemporary Poet a ^ A r t i s t and C r i t i c ,

27 " 'Ibid. See also the notes on "the edge" in the

discussion of "The Abyss." iii<Mi|i|i|iMi|i|i|iMiiU

54 light of the correspondence of "natural" things.

Stanza four begins by reaffirming this paradox­

ical condition. "Dark, dark my light, and darker my

desire." Then the poet even questions his own identity.

"Which I is I?" he asks. Which is the real, the self

or the "shade?" Then he concludes:

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind.

And one is One, free in the .tearing wind (p. 239).

There is a resolution of some sort, though the exact

meaning of this conclusion is ambiguous. The climbing

out could certainly have references to a mental abyss,

in this instance fear. Even Roethke's comments are not

much help on the last two lines, though the conflict is

at least resolved. The mind "enters itself," ceases to

be in conflict with itself. There is a oneness with

Divinity and the resulting joy of freedom; as if Roethke

is saying with Paul in his letter to the Romans, "The

night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore

cast off the v;orks of darkness, and let us put on the

armour of light." But the word "tearing" is ambiguous;

it certainly does not connote perfect peace. Roethke

seems to imply that the condition of oneness is in itself

one of trial or tension. Ralph J. Mills offers this ex­

planation: "The 'tearing wind' is obviously the breath

of spiritual force we have often noticed; at this instant

55 it is, understandably, at its strongest."^^

The second poem of this sequence is "In Evening

Air," a poem in four numbered stanzas. "A dark theme

keeps me here," he begins, and the meaning of this

should be clear in light of the previous discussion.

The implication is again that the desired state of

light, dance, and song has not been realized:

Waking's my care--

I'll make a broken music, or I'll die (p. 240).

The idea of waking in Roethke's poetry is complex. He

has two poems with the title "The Waking." It would

appear, however, the idea of waking is similar to his

feeling or sense of becoming. Waking and becoming are

as similar as the abyss and the dark time. The point of

the two lines is, though, that song is integral to being,

or that death is preferable to existence without song, however "broken":

Make me, 0 Lord, a last, a simple thing Time cannot overwhelm (p. 240).

In stanza two the poet asks to be made timeless. He ex­

presses the same idea in "A Walk in Late Summer," from

Words for the Wind:

It lies upon us to undo the lie Of living merely in the realm of time (p, 179).

This is another of Roethke's many struggles. In the

28 "Roethke's Last Poems," 0£. cit., p. 130.

56 latter part of the stanza he tells that this undoing

once occurred when "A bud broke to a rose," when he

achieved a state of pure empathy.

In stanza three a tree disappears as darkness

comes on and the poet embraces the night, "a dear prox­

imity." Part four brings to mind "The Tranced," for here

again the poet, though this time alone, stares into "a

low fire" and watches the shifting patterns on a wall:

I see, in evening air.

How slowly dark comes down on what \ie do (p. 240).

These final lines are cryptic, but it seems that night

here is more friend than foe, especially in view of the

previous stanza where it is called "a dear proximity."

Roethke is apparently lamenting the v/eariness that comes

from too much doing. In Frost's words, "I am overtired/

Of the great harvest I myself desired." And this also

recalls again the final line of "The Abyss": "Being,

not doing, is my first joy." In short, there is a tone

of weltschmertz; the poet merely wishes to be.

"The Sequel" is another poem in four regular,

numbered stanzas or parts. The title may refer to the

previous two poems, perhaps only to "In Evening Air," or to still other poems:

Was I too glib about eternal things. An intimate of air and all its songs (p. 24l)?

He begins with this question, and in the remainder of

this stanza Roethke wonders about conclusions he has

57 previously reached and things he has done:

I thought I knew the truth; Of grief I died, but no one knew my death (p. 24l).

The poet envisions in stanza two "a body dancing in the

wind,/ A shape called up out of my natural mind." Then

he and other of nature's creatures dance "under a dancing

moon":

And on the coming of the outrageous dawn.

We danced together, we danced on and on (p. 24l)t

Roethke is describing pure ecstasy and empathy, the dance

of being, explaining how it is in a dancing soul. And

later in the poem the dance acquires sensual character­

istics.

"Morning's a motion in a happy mind" begins stanza

three. Here, hov/ever, the poem becomes, as Roethke's

poems so often do, complex and ambiguous, for Roethke be-r

gins referring to a "she," which is apparently the wraith

with which he was dancing in stanza two. Ralph J. Mills

explains the figure in his article "Roethke's Last Poems": Roethke begins "The Sequel" as a poem of self-

questioning, queries his motives, the character of his experience; but soon he sees "a body dancing in the wind" which distracts his attention. This is a figure of more than one meaning: first, his guide, his Beatrice, who appears frequently in love poems and other earlier lyrics; second, the anlma or scr;l_, which is a female principle in the male (see "The Restored" in this sequence, where it has a poem \ itself). The figure heralds another spiritual av, :en-ing and engages the poet in a dance of universal cele­bration that continues into "The Restored" and reaches a climax in "Once More, the Round."29

-•I II *t

'J

I'll

29ibid., p. 131.

58 Stanza one mentions "wild longings of the insatiate

blood," which gives the poem definite sensuous overtones.

He says later in part three, "I gave her body full and

grave farewell," v/hich is also obviously sensual. An­

other paradox occurs as the coming day begins in dark­

ness:

A light leaf on a tree, she swayed av/ay

To the dark beginnings of another day (p. 24l),

This might be a reference to dawn, but probably means

that the lost sensuality produces a form of mental dark­

ness, a loss of sensual pleasure and joy.

The loss is seen, in stanza four, to be more, how­

ever, than merely the loss of one sensual or sexual ex­

perience. "All waters waver, and all fires fail,"

Roethke says in line two of the stanza. He does not mean

mental fires, but fires of the body. This point becomes

clearer in the last two lines: I feel the autumn fail—all that slow fire Denied in me, who has denied desire (p. 242).

Being denied, desire—sensual and sexual—fails. "The

Sequel" is a natural adjunct to the more metaphysical

strivings in "In a Dark Time."

The title of the next poem, "The Motion," immed­

iately recalls the last poem and the dance. The dance

is a symbol of the cyclic and rhythmic quality of nature.

Pure dance or motion is the essence of being. "The soul

has many motions, body one," he begins, indicating the

111

59 limitless quality of the spirit or mind. But the one

motion of the body, lust, keeps the mind alive and en­

genders love:

By lust alone we keep the mind alive.

And grieve into the certainty of love (p. 243).

Body may have but one motion, but it isn't to be under­

estimated. Love is doubtless, to Roethke, sensual in

nature, thus capable of causing grief (in light of the

last poem).

In stanza two, of the four numbered stanzas,

Roethke begins, "Love begets love. This torment is my

joy." Never far from struggle and anguish he faces the

paradox. He seems to question whether or not it can be

avoided, once permitted:

What vje put down, must we take up again? I dare embrace. By striding, I remain (p. 243).

It is agony, but he cannot let it go. Roethke speaks

more optimistically of love in stanza three. "Who but

the loved know love's a faring-forth?" he asks. The

syntax in this and the next stanza, which are largely

one sentence, is complex and ambiguous, but the "faring-forth" is apparently:

this final certitude. This reach beyond this death, this act of love In which all creatures share, and thereby live (p. 243).

Love is the moment of eternity; through love we live.

The last stanza is even more cryptic, becoming

more metaphysical. The implication is that the motion

60

operates both in the physical and spiritual realms, thus

linking this stanza to the first. The ecstasy on a phys­

ical level thus becomes ecstasy on a metaphysical level,

the essence of being. He concludes, "O, motion, 0,

our chance is still to be]"

"Infirmity" comprises six regular stanzas of six

lines each. The infirmity is age and the nearness of

death, but the poem is not pessimistic. According to

W. D. Snodgrass in "The Anguish of Concreteness,"

"Roethke accurately predicts his own death, clearly long­

ing for it."^ Again a struggle is involved, this time

between body and spirit, spirit being victorious:

I stare and sta,re into a deepening pool

And tell myself my image cannot die (p. 244).

The deepening pool is further revelation that comes with

age, revelations that appear in the "inner eye" (line 2).

Stanza one concludes, "Oh, to be something else, yet

still to be]" This may reflect the conflict between

body and spirit. The implication is that loss of the

body would leave the pure spirit, but would mean at the

same time loss of being as physical presence.

In stanza two Roethke describes more of his phys­

ical decay, but asks Christ to praise it since it means

he is coming nearer to spirit:

" 'I

ii>i

'.;>

30 Ibid., p. 85.

61 Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity; There's little left I care to call my ov/n. Today they drained the fluid from a knee And pumped a shoulder full of cortisone (p. 244).

Further development of the decay process is given in

stanza three:

Light on its rounds, a pure extreme of light

Breaks on me as my meager flesh breaks down (p. 244).

The decay of one is the realization of the other. And

death is only once: "I am son and father of my only

death." In content stanza four is similar to stanza

three, both describing the coming of aging and death:

Dead to myself, and all I hold most dear,

I move beyond the reach of wind and fire (p. 244).

He is beyond their reach because he is becoming spirit.

Stanza five leaves the implication that at death

there is a loss of consciousness, though one is still

spirit. Roethke does not dread this state, but it would

seem to preclude further the joys of the mind. He I-1

approaches purity of spirit and the state of empathy, i; but death, it seems, is the end of consciousness:

My ears still hear the bird when all is still; My soul is still my soul, and still the Son. And knowing this, I am not yet undone (p. 244).

"Eternity's not easily come by," he says in the last

stanza. Apparently death is not equal to eternity. One

must strive and endure the agony of "becoming" to realize

that moment of pure empathy that is eternity:

iij " " I

62 When opposites come suddenly in place, I teach my eyes to hear, my ears to see How body from spirit slowly does unwind Until we are pure spirit at the end (p. 244).

Roethke never ceased striving to understand the "unwind­

ing" and the nature of these opposites.

"The Decision" is a shorter poem in two stanzas.

Roethke never says, but the concern expressed in the

poem probably involves death. Since Roethke usually

juxtaposes similar poems in a sequence, this assumption

is safe, for "Infirmity" is at least partly concerned

with death's coming. In stanza one the poet is v7orried

about the unseen:

What shakes the eye but the invisible?

Running from God's the longest race of all (p. 245).

It is the metaphysical that shakes us most strongly.

Objects and sounds in the mind we cannot escape. Roethke

mentions other sounds from his youxh that he was never

able to escape.

"Which is the way?" he cries in stanza two, for

this is the decision he must make. Death is approaching,

"The line of my horizon's growing thin]" The agony of the situation asserts itself:

I cry to the dread black. The shifting shade, the cinders at my back. Which is the way? I ask, and turn to go. As a man turns to face on-coming snovr (p. 245).

The journey is perilous, but he has faced the situation

before. These lines recall strongly "The Waking," from

The Waking:

•I >

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go (p. 124).

63

This may be Roethke's own decision about the question.

Of course, this poem also recalls "The Abyss" and "In

a Dark Time." The vray is not clear, but he is resolved

to the struggle to find out.

The struggle of "Infirmity" and "The Decision" is

continued in "The Marrow," a poem of four regular stanzas. I

Stanza one reflects a discontent \ilth "mortal life":

From a burnt pine the sharp speech of a crow Tells me my drinking breeds a will to die. What's the worst portion in this mortal life? | A pensive mistress, and a yelping wife (p. 246). I

He finds thwarted love most unbearable and perhaps turns | I

to drinking as a partial substitute. The life-death

battle continues in stanza two. In contemplation "One

white face chimmers brighter than the sun." This is un­

doubtedly Goa in his metaphysical realm. But the poet

knows "One look too close can take my soul away." The

state of "pure spirit in the end" implies that death has

taken place, and he is thus cautious about the prospects.

He is aging, and now "Pain wanders through my bones like

a lost fire;" the fire, he explains, is "Desire, desire,

desire." He desires more confrontation with sensual ex­

perience and love, knowing death will terminate the pros­

pects.

In stanza three the poet shows signs of anxiety

concerning the state of pure spirit and the realm of God.

In this act of consecration Roethke reveals his desire

for God's knowledge, though it is doubtful this is the

implication of the desire in stanza two. He will give

the very essence of his self to the One who knov;s all,

an act v;hich may be contemplative or simply one culminated

at the point of death.

"I Waited" is a symbolic confrontation with death

as the poet vacillates at the point. In contemplation

Roethke approaches the pale of death, beyond which lie

6 God-head above my God, are you there still?" he cries,

wanting to be assured before the time comes. And wishing

to be understood in his agonies, he says:

Lord, hear me out, and hear me out this day:

From me to Thee's a long and terrible v/ay (p. 246).

The tone here is one both of urgency and frustration,

with implications of the "dark night of the soul." The

struggle to unwind body and spirit is no easy one.

Nearing the state of pure spirit, he says in stanza

four, "I have slain my will, and still I live." This re­

mark comes in contrast to stanza tv70, vfhere he says desire r

remains. There is, of course, a subtle difference between \ I

desire and will, and perhaps he is.saying in stanza four i I f

that in spite of desire's presence he has conquered his i|

will. Yet this has not brought on death. The rest of !|

this stanza almost comes as a desire for the end: " » I would be near; I shut my eyes to see; ! I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow ] Upon that God who knov/s what I would know (p. 246). j

65 some fearful unlmovms. Stanzas one and two tell of the

poet standing in a field, the far field, no doubt. But

something is ominous about the situation:

I waited for the vfind to move the dust; But no wind came (p. 24?).

This atmosphere in the field, vmich stifled his senses,

stirred him to deep meditation and pure empathy with the

surroundings. Roethke describes the setting, then

remarks:

And I became all that I looked upon. I dazzled in the dazzle of a stone (p. 24?).

This is a perfectly direct statement of empathy, perhaps !

Roethke's clearest.

Then in stanza three he is shocked back into

reality a la knocking on the door in Macbeth. "And then

a jackass brayed. A lizard leaped my foot." He is again

confronted with the physical and for a moment shaken from

I moved like some heat-v/eary animal.

I we.nt, not looking back. I was afraid (p. 247).

The fear came from his nearness in the field to pure

spirit, and thus to death. In stanza four the poet pro­

ceeds "Through a rocky gorge" to "a small plateau," and:

Below, the bright sea was, the level waves.

And all the v/inds came toward me. I was glad (p. 247),

He was glad because his physical senses were rejuvenated

by the wind, and he was thus reassured of his physical

presence. He was glad he was not dead and "pure spirit

11

i!

11

the metaphysical: j

at the end."

"The Tree, The Bird" is a short poem in three

irregular stanzas. The message and tone are joy. The

longer first stanza describes a midnight setting, and

once again the poet is in a state of empathy with his

surroundings, as beautifully indicated by the opening

lines:

Uprose, uprose, the stony fields uprose.

And every snail dipped toward me its pure horn (p. 248).

The remainder of the stanza describes the dark setting and

the willow tree, and the poet as a leaf of this tree, a

part of the setting. Then the bird sings loudly from the

tree, but the poet says, "I could not bear its song." I

Why, one might ask, and Roethke gives a partial answer.

"How deep the mother-root of that still cry]" The bird,

like the pc?t^ becomes a part of the tree and sings the

tree's song, the song of pure spirit. The roots of the

bird and the poet thus become the roots of the tree, in

metaphysical, not physical, terms. Thus the cry is one

of pure spirit, the soul in nature, and this causes the

same dread the poet felt in "I Waited." Confronted

with spirit, he is also confronted with death.

Stanza three describes further the coming realiza­

tion of spirit. The bird is taking wing, like his soul

and body, and thus becomes a symbol for their struggle,

their striving:

67 Thus I endure this last pure stretch of joy.

The dire dimension of a final thing (p. 248).

From the agony of the struggle comes the ultimate part,

joy—joy in the face of death.

In "The Restored" the poet pictures his own soul

dancing "In a hand like a bowl." Ralph J. Mills com­

ments on the soul in his article "Roethke's Last Poems": Within the evolutionary scheme of Roethke's

poetry, the scheme which traces the course of the emergent self, there is a simultaneous development of what is variously called soul or spirit, which we might say is the inner or ruling principle of the self. The term "self" appears to embrace and unite both the physical and spiritual components of the individual into a whole of particular iden­tity. The spirit is perhaps the bloom, the last and highest glory of the self and so becomes the guiding and motivating principle in his experience, its ascent on the scale of being. 31 !'

Then the soul tells him she cannot fly because she only '

has one wing, and the poet becomes distraught: . ;

When I raged, when I wailed, \ And my reason failed, ; That delicate thing • Grew back a ne\i wing, '

And danced, at high noon. On a hot, dusty stone. In the still point of light Of my last midnight (p. 249).

The message seems clear: once resolved to our fate,

resolved to its mysteries, we then embody, through our

souls, the spirit and empathy we truly desire. The last

midnight probably refers to the last dark night of the

31lt)id.3 p. 117.

68 spirit, one's final acceptance before death,

"The Right Thing" is a song of joy, a carefree

interlude from the poet's., agonies. The point the poet

makes and repeats four times is simply, "The right thing

happens to the happy men." This recalls reason's fail­

ing in the previous poem:

Let others probe the mystery if they can. Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will--The right thing happens to the happy man (p. 250).

To be happy and joyous—that is enough, for the:

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun. His being single, and that being all (p. 250)—

or: I

Takes to himself what mystery he can.

And, praising change as the slow night comes on. Wills what he would, surrendering his will Till mystery is no more: No more he can. The right thing happens to the happy man (p. 250).

I! I '

The poet here is in harmony with existence. He has lived • I

his life to know, but he will not let the unlearned mys- |

teries dismay him, for the right thing will happen anyway

if he is happy.

The final poem of the sequence is a short one,

"Once More, the Round." It is a resolution of all

struggles:

What's greater. Pebble or Pond? What can be knov/n? The Unknov/n. J^ true self runs toward a Hill More] 0 More] visible (p. 251).

Objects have been translated into Diety and are thus

69 capitalized. The poet becomes the spirit, unwrapt

from body:

And I dance with William Blake For love, for Love's sake;

And everything comes to One,

As we dance on, dance on, dance on (p. 251).

We come to One again, as at the end of the first poem

of the sequence, "In a Dark Time," and all is now the

"pure fury," the dance Roethke loved so well.

In this last sequence Roethke has handled some

complex subjects, has faced unflinchingly both physical

life and ultimate realities. He was not desirous of the

end, the man vrho so loved his senses, but he was resolved to it.

It is quite evident by now that The Far Field is

in several ways the culmination of Roethke's work. First,

it doubtless represents the finest and most mature ex­

amples of his poetic expression. Many of the poems in

The Far Field represent a control and sophistication

that come only with years of practice. The last sequences

also represent a culmination of his work in this direction.

"North American Sequence" and "Sequence, Sometimes Meta­

physical" are probably as fine stylistically as "The Lost

Son" sequence, and they certainly represent a further

step in Roethke's thematic, mental, strivings. The

struggle begun in the "Lost Son" sequence is clearly

resolved in the sequences of The Far Field. "The Lost

70 Son" sequence explores a young man's "dark beginnings";

The Far Field carries these searchings forward into the

realm of the metaphysical.

The Far Field thus objectifies a continuance and

resolution of the struggles and strivings Roethke com­

menced in Open House, his first volume. The progression

was increasingly metaphysical; struggles to understand

the physical and immediate slowly became struggles to

comprehend the spiritual. Roethke's emphasis shifted

from his physical self to this soul or spiritual self.

The Far Field then is the culmination of Roethke's meta­

physical strivings.

It is safe to say that without some knowledge of

Roethke's earlier poetry and earlier agonies, one cannot

gain a complete appreciation of The Far Field. Nearly

all Roethke's poetry manifests the same preoccupations,

imagery, and symbolism. All his poetry seems singularly

directed to discovering the metaphysical truths he ex­

pressed in The Far Field. This is, however, the very

objection some critics have directed at his poetry:

it is too narrov; in scope. So what on the one hand makes

The Far Field significant is, on the other, the reason

Roethke is not of the stature of a Yeats, Stevens, or

Frost.

It has been my purpose in this paper, however, to

explain the wholeness of Roethke's work, particularly as

• 71

it is manifested in his poetic sequences, his most sig­

nificant contribution to poetry. It should be clear

how all his work is unified to produce a complete and

meaningful whole. Roethke did not merely create problems

and ask questions; he also offered his ovm personal solu­

tions to many of his questions. Perhaps the scope of his

strivings and searchings was limited, but the intense

concentration he devotes to his struggles is astonishing.

This devotion is clearly exemplified in the poetry of

The Far Field, the volume in vrhich Roethke expresses his

final answers. This paper serves then as a guide to all

of Roethke's work, but particularly to his final striv­

ings, resolutions, and answers.

Roethke's place as one of the great American poets

seems assured; he already seems to be gaining ground in .

the eyes of critics. Though he is still largely unknown

to the public, he has a vigorous selected following.

And whereas he will never be considered on a par \i±th

Yeats, Auden, Frost, Stevens, Cummings, or Eliot, he

nevertheless is firmly grounded within the next line of

great poets. And it might be added that he is consider­

ably more readable than, say, Eliot, Stevens, or Cummings,

v/hose poetry bristles with difficulties. In short, he

deserves more general recognition than he has yet claimed.

Theodore Roethke is intensely fresh, vital, and

moving. His art is original and distinctive, and his

h -

72 voice pre-eminently human; and for these reasons, too,

he deserves a permanent place in American poetry. His

struggles and strivings are in reality ours as well, and

should not be forgotten. In the final stanza of "The

Dying Man" (Words for the Wind) Roethke gave a hint of

what those who would follow him to the far field would

find, a statement which would make a fitting epitaph:

The edges of the summit still appal When we brood on the dead or the beloved; Nor can imagination do it all In this last place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of

things (p. 190).

[ I

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