  Poetry
This week: Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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| This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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In A Dark Time
by Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
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.
On May 25, 1908, Theodore Huebner Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. His father, Otto Roethke and his mother Helen Huebner owned a local greenhouse. Roethke spent his childhood helping his parents in the greenhouse. At the age of fifteen, Roethke lost his father to cancer. This tragic event made Roethke even more determined to pursue his creative talents. Though the rest of the family wanted him to attend law school after graduation, Roethke would only stayed in for one semester. Roethke took graduate courses at the University of Michigan and later the Harvard Graduate School, but the great depression would cause Roethke to drop out of Harvard.
Roethke began teaching in 1931, at Lafayette College. He stayed there for four years before moving on to teach at Michigan State College at Lansing. This was short lived, Roethke had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized. Roethke would have many recurrences of depression over his life time. In 1936 Roethke went back to teaching at Pennsylvania State University. He taught there for the next seven years. It was during his time Roethke was published in such journals as Poetry, the New Republic, the Saturday Review, and Sewanee Review. His first volume verse, "Open House," was published in 1941. Two years later he left Penn State to teach at Bennington College. Roethke's second volume, "The Lost Son and Other Poems" was published in 1948. Roethke was awarded Guggenheim Fellowship in 1950. Then one year later, Poetry magazine Levinson Prize. In 1952, he was awarded major grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 1953 Roethke married Beatrice O'Connell a former student. Roethke did not inform his new bride of his battles with depression, yet through it all she stayed with him. On their honeymoon Roethke started editing his book, The Waking: Poems 1933-1953 which was published later that same year, winning him the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. In 1955 Roethke and his wife started a year long tour of Europe on a Fulbright grant. Then in 1957 he published "Words for the Wind," winning the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize, the Longview Foundation Award, and the Pacific Northwest Writer's Award for it.
On August 1, 1963, while swimming in a friends pool, Roethke suffered a fatal heart attack at 55. The pool, located on Brainbridge Island, is now filled and is a zen rock garden, which can be viewed by the public. After her husbands death O'Connell published his last volume of poetry "The Far Field" in 1964. This book received the National Book Award
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
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.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lonely worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air;
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Night Journey
By Theodore Roethke
Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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Twirling Windmills
The haze of spring's dawn-shower mists subside
in drops of rainbow splendor on the leaves.
They give way to the early sunrise blaze
with burnished flames of orange, bronzed to red.
In royal blues and purples spread a field,
a garden of forget-me-nots in bloom.
They're nestled in a haven, flourishing
between the barren rust of horse-hooved paths.
The brumbies whinny, wicker, bound and neigh
and towering above them spin the spokes,
all winged in white and framed in golden hues,
of six earth-grounded windmills, stately, sprite.
They clatter their, "Good Mornings" joyful, bright
with twirling swirls of chatter; lithe and glad.
They reaped the sighs of brisk, cool morning's breeze;
in essence welcoming another day.
While waking to the wonder of the sun,
the blossoms sip the nectar of night's dew,
and balanced on the precipice of life,
give glory to creation's gifted hand.
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: May 09, 2007 Issue [#1697]
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