Who Else? Roethke

You may know I work with elderly people at a larger assisted living facility.  There is so much knowledge there among the residents!  I have met 2 women, one in her 80′s, the other in her 90′s who were clinical psychologists.  Another woman is a politician.  There are quite a few teachers and principals.  There are also several librarians.

There’s a former US Marshall, and 2 of our residents (that I know of) have published their autobiographies.  Nothing is greater than plumbing the brains of these wise sages.

One of them, a former librarian, manages our library.  A month or so ago, I spotted a book-old, but in perfect condition.  It was Roethke: collected poems.  I thought, surely, there are not many people here who would be interested in this book.  It was sitting on a table with other new additions, which are always donations.  I was very curious who donated it!

I sort of forgot about it until I was in the library a week or 2 later.  The librarian just happened to be there.  I couldn’t even remember what book had attracted my attention, but I mentioned to her I had seen one that looked very interesting.  I couldn’t find it on the shelf.  Later I saw the book in a pile in a corner.  I took it and went to the librarian’s room and asked her if she was keeping the book.

We had a wonderful conversation.  There is limited space in our library, and the librarian thought she wasn’t going to keep this treasure, and gave it to me!  We also talked about her church, Bon Air Christian.  She has 3 paintings of this lovely church in her apartment/condo.  I’ve wanted to go back to church, and I like Disciples of Christ.  They are not as conservative as a lot of other churches.  She was such a wonderful steward of her church, it made me want to visit.  I pass it on my way to work, and it’s quite close to my house.

Plus, my friend’s grandfather, A. Dale Fiers, was very active in this faith.  He was one of the kindest, wisest people I ever met in my life.  When we were little “Grandpa & Grandma Fiers” used to make cassette tapes and play music and talk on them to my friend.  They were incredible.  So warm and kind.  Once we visited them in FL and had the best time.  We were silly teenagers at the time, and Grandma Fiers indulged us in our silliness.  I’ll have to write it all down so I don’t forget.  It was, after all, over 30 years ago!

Back to Roethke.  He was tortured in many ways, but his writing was, I don’t even know how to describe it.  He lost his father when he was 15, and I will leave you with a poem he wrote.  It is called ‘My Papa’s Waltz’.  For an analysis of this poem, you can click here.

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

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

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

You can listen to a lovely reading of this poem here.  And there we are.  Here is a pic of Roethke.  I got it from Wikipedia.  Poor man.

A Roethke Poem

We needed a lift, right?!

Haven’t blogged in so long.  And I’ve been reading a lot.  Still reading long form magazine articles.  I also discovered Byliners.com.  I love the internets!   I also read ‘Gone Boy’ by Greg Gibson, about his journey after the murder of his son, in a shooting spree at his college in 1992.  It was excellent.  I’ll give it its own post.

Needed a Theodore Roethke fix and found it here.  He captures the feeling of poverty quite well here.

Enjoy!

The Reckoning

All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.

In a Theodore Roethke mood….

Here’s a lovely one about adolescence.  I found it here.

Pickle Belt
by Theodore Roethke
The fruit rolled by all day. They prayed the cogs would creep; They thought about Saturday pay, And Sunday sleep. Whatever he smelled was good: The fruit and flesh smells mixed. There beside him she stood,-- And he, perplexed; He, in his shrunken britches, Eyes rimmed with pickle dust, Prickling with all the itches Of sixteen-year-old lust.

My muse

has been quite elusive.  I’ve been rather preoccupied with my job hunt, though.  I did finally start something else.  It’s called Bringing Down the House.  It reads quickly, and is very interesting.  I’ve wanted to read it for years.  It will be a quick read, then I can go back to the other book.  Perhaps.  I might move on to something new.

I think I’m needing some literary sustenance, poetry.  I’m liking Mary Oliver.  And I like Billy Collins and I love Theodore Roethke, even if he was a maybe pedophile.  I don’t think he was physically.  But he did love–who was it-Sarah?  He wrote of her.

Well, I’m getting to bed.  Will be spending Mother’s Day with my Mum.  Going to church w/ her in am.  Tim & Barrett are going to Tim’s parents’ in Williamsburg.  Makes me a little sad not to be w/ my boys this day, but it’s okay.  I need to be w/ Mama.

Roethke Poem-The Geranium

I love this!!!!  I found it here.  By Theodore Roethke, a master poet  He is, perhaps, my favorite.  I think I identify w/ his melancholy & elegies. 

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
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–
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.
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. 

No one quite captures

despair like Roethke.  I found it here.

In A Dark Time

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 a 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.

Theodore Roethke

I know I’ve mentioned Theodore Roethke

He was born the same year as my Granny!  One of the characters on NCIS-LA (an eccentric played by the always lovely Linda Hunt) mentioned a Roethke and one of his poems on the show last week.  I was impressed.

I’m going to link to where I found the poem, and I want to comment on the site.  It is for the Kingfisher, A Journal of Northwest Art and Literature.  I found the writer’s introduction about Roethke refreshing.  The site is full of beautiful art, literature and some other genres of the creative realm.

I found this interesting poem here:

Open House 
My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.

My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I’m naked to the bone.
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear.
I keep the spirit spare.

The anger will endure.
The deed will speak the truth.
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth:
Rage warps my clearest cry
To witless agony.

Roethke Poem

I did mention I liked Theodore Roethke, right?  I am going to print a poem here that a poet & I discussed.  Wondering what you think.  It comes from this website. 

Oh, and I also recommend you check out my new poet friend, Shaindel Beers.  Her work is very human and moving.  I am definitely going to buy her book.

Anywho, back to the Roethke Poem:

Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.
Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.
My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.
If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

So, is this not quite intense for a teacher to write about his student?  Or, as Shaindel pointed out, if you are a beloved student of poetry, would you not want your teacher to write an elegy for you?  I think Shaindel raises a good question here. 

Thoughts, anyone?

Theodore Roethke-The Waking

Barry, a man in my Creative Spark writing class, mentioned a poem by this man the other night so I checked it out.  It is beautiful, and I am sharing it here.   The repeated line, ”I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow,” really resonates with me.   I will definitely be reading more of this poet.  Thanks, Barry.

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 beside 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 lowly 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.

Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1953 by Theodore Roethke. Reprinted with the permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1961)