Theodore Roethke: Poems Literary Elements

As a leading figure in the school of confessional poetry, Roethke peppers his verse with a multitude of pronouns like “I” and “me” and “our.” It is a given that the speaker in most of his body of work is, in one sense or another, an extension of the poet himself to far greater degree than is the norm.

Confessional poetry is not just a genre, but in many ways a form unto itself. The general concept is that the poem is quite literally a confession and, as such, it is in the moment. Impulsive and free-flowing, it may lack the aesthetics of formal meter and conventional structural, but what it lacks in those elements is gained from emotional insight and a spirit of rebellion. However, at the same time, Roethke could also prove himself a master of meter: “The Waking” is an example of iambic pentameter strictly applied to the rigid form of aa villanelle.

Root Cellar” overflows with both as imagery to bring to the senses exactly that element of a root cellar that most people don’t wish to visit: “And what a congress of stinks! / Roots ripe as old bait”

“The Storm” is brought to life through the alliterative qualities of the “s” sound which replicates the sound of the wind: “Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces; / A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves, / And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming”

The greatest example of irony in Roethke’s work is centered in his most famous poem, “My Papa’s Waltz.” Ironically, it is equally applicable to interpret this poem as a heartwarming recollection of an adult looking back with nostalgia to his childhood or as a darker half-memory of parental child abuse.

Confessional poetry.

A defining feature of the poet’s body of work is that he is remarkably out-of-sync with the times in which he wrote. One way of looking at this is that his writing has a quality of timelessness. Another way, however, suggests that he persistently ignored in creative output the fact that he was writing during one of the most tumultuous eras in human history. All the events of the 20th century seem strangely absent as topics and themes.

The tone of Roethke’s poetry is, for the most part, rather dark as a mature intellect with experience examining existence informed by the knowledge of inexorably mortality. Which makes the comic tone of his light verse all the more enjoyable: “I had a Donkey, that was all right, / But he always wanted to fly my Kite; / Every time I let him, the String would bust. / Your Donkey is better behaved, I trust.”

Protagonist: Innocence and wonder. Antagonist: Experience and depression.

The major conflict of “Epidermal Macabre” is one existing between the poet and his body. It is a disagreement couched in overly poetic language: “I hate my epidermal dress”

The climax of “Snake” is a perfect example of the poet’s tendency toward the anticlimax as it draws to a close not with conflict or allusions to evil, but an urge toward wish fulfillment: I longed to be that thing. / The pure, sensuous form. / And I may be, some time.”

A unique literary device used later in the poem is foreshadowed in the opening line of “The Sloth.” He is first described: “In moving-slow he has no Peer” and then six lines later this defining attribute of the animal is made manifest: “A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.”

The climax of “The Geranium” is an example of understatement through parallel. The subject of the poem is the speaker’s plant which he has treated rather less than well, nearly allowing it to die once before nursing it back to health only to have it unceremoniously tossed into the trash by his maid: “But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,/ I was that lonely.”

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The opening line of “Big Wind” refers to a ship carrying a cargo of roses with an example of synecdoche: “Where were the greenhouses going”

The titular figure of “The Bat” is personified in the poem’s final imagery which attempts to explain the near-universal repulsion toward a creature that most people never come into close contact with: “For something is amiss or out of place / When mice with wings can wear a human face”

“Dolor” is a poem that is constructed upon the use of hyperbole in its opening sentence: “I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils”

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