02222cam a2200313 i 4500 363685011 TxAuBib 20190107120000.0 041022s2005||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2004061553 9781931082785 20.00 1931082782 20.00 eng rda TxAuBib rda Roethke, Theodore, 1908-1963. Poems Selections. Theodore Roethke [BOOK] : selected poems / Theodore Roethke ; edited by Edward Hirsch. New York : Library of America, 2005. xxv, 158 pages ; 20 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier American poets project ; 15 Includes bibliographical references and index. From the recollections of his youth in Michigan to the visionary longings of the poems written just before his death, Theodore Roethke embarked on a quest to restore wholeness to a self that seemed irreparably broken. In the words of editor Edward Hirsch, “He courted the irrational and embraced what is most vulnerable in life.” Hirsch's selection and perceptive introduction illuminate the daring and intensity of a poet who, in poems such as “My Papa's Waltz” and “The Lost Son,” reached back into the abyss of childhood in an attempt to wrest self-knowledge out of memory. Roethke's true subject was the unfathomable depths of his own being, but his existential investigations were always shaped and disciplined by an exacting formal stringency, as equally at ease with Yeats' vigorous cadence (“Four for Sir John Davies”) as with the spacious Whitmanian idiom on display in the virtuoso efforts of The Far Field. This gathering of Roethke's works also includes several of his poems for children, and a generous sampling from his notebook writings, offering a glimpse of the poet at work with the raw materials of language and ideas. Provided by publisher. 20190107. Poetry. Hirsch, Edward. American poets project ; 15.