Essay Questions

On what “school of poetry” is Roethke considered to have wielded the most influence and who are some famous graduates of this school that reveal his influence the most?

With the publication of his 1948 collection The Lost Son, Roethke became the progenitor of “confessional poetry” movement which really took root in the 1950’s. Although confessional poetry has existed for as long as verse itself, the movement with which Roethke is most closely affiliated is strongly associated with the Beat Movement and takes as its driving philosophy the assertion by William Carlos Williams that there is no such thing as an unsuitable subject for poetry. Among the poets most strongly influenced by the work Roethke are such icons of the confessional verse as Anne Sexton, Stanley Kunitz, and, of course, Sylvia Plath.

How does the poem “Night Journey” address Roethke’s obsession with landscapes and recurring theme of isolation?

The trip on the train that gives the poem its name is fraught with imagery of the natural world outside the locomotive. Among the topographical features that are described are trees, mountains, lakes, ravines, gullies and even the mist that clouds the ravines and valleys. For a poet famous for utilizing his family’s greenhouses as an all-encompassing symbol, this focus on the landscape outside the moving train might only be expected. The voice of the poet as he describes the natural world outside, however, is one who is describing that landscape through the lens of being isolated. Not only is he isolated behind the steel of the train, but he is also alienated from the other passengers. This sense of isolation—of being a lone voice crying out in the wilderness—is a theme that runs rampant throughout the work of Roethke.

Those greenhouses from his youth that made such an impact upon Roethke led to what supernatural belief system becoming a recurring motif in his poetry?

Roethke’s intense observation of life growing under the control of the greenhouses owned by his parents had the effect of making Roethke one of the most intense observers of the relationship of man to the landscapes surrounding him. The descriptions of those elements of plants and vegetation and topographical features become symbolic of the topography of the life cycle of mankind. The recurrence of this attribution of a human-like soul to the natural phenomena which Roethke describes with such precision of meaning is known as “animism.”

Roethke often uses plants and nature as the central characters/ideas of his poems. Why do you think he chose to use these elements so often?

Part of Roethke’s fascination with plants likely stems from this fact that his father was a horticulturist. As a result, Roethke spent a great deal of his boyhood in his father’s greenhouses, surrounded by growing plants. Roethke also likely utilized plants as literary elements due to their universal recognition. Most everyone on earth is familiar with plants, flowers, and the way they grow, blossom, and bloom. Additionally, flowers are very metaphorical in nature. They represent re-birth, death, the circle of life, and good vs. evil. Their ability to represent multiple metaphors likely appealed to Roethke’s literary sensibilities.

Identify, quote, and analyze some of the poetic devices that Roethke deploys in “My Papa’s Waltz.”

Roethke uses assonance—repeated use of the same vowels—quite often in this poem. In one stanza, Roethke writes: “With a palm baked hard by dirt/Then waltzed me off to bed.” In these lines, the repeated use of the “a” vowel in words like palm, hard, and waltzed creates a lilting rhythm that is reflective of the painful rhythm the narrator’s father used to beat him. Another poetic device Roethke uses often is that of consonance—similar ending consonants in a word. In one stanza, Roethke writes: “The whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy;/But I hung on like death:/Such waltzing was not easy.” Here, the ending consonants of “th” in breath and death are the same. Roethke uses the same poetic devices with the use of words such as “buckle” and “knuckle” and “shirt” and “dirt.” Use of this particular device is significant because the consonance effect is always used with harsh words that exemplify the narrator’s abuse. These words are aggressive and therefore help to personify the seriousness of the narrator’s situation.

Identify and analyze three themes in “My Papa’s Waltz.”

The first theme that is prominent in “My Papa’s Waltz” is that of parental betrayal. Though the narrator’s abusive father is the most obvious indicator of parental betrayal, it’s also important to note that the mother fails to protect the narrator. The domestic violence between the father/son and father/mother results in a messy domestic situation, one in which the narrator (the son) is the primary victim. This leads to the second primary theme: security. Parents are supposed to love, care for, and support their children. In this particular situation, rife with domestic abuse, all the child (the narrator) feels is fright and insecurity. Despite this, he quite literally clings to his father in the hope that somewhere, deep down in his father’s heart, there is love and tenderness. Finally, the theme that Roethke explores in this poem is the theme of the dangers of alcohol. Roethke explicitly states that the cause of the father’s abusive habits is alcohol. In this way, alcohol is positioned as an enemy, which runs parallel alongside the father. Much like the father, the poem borders on insanity. Alcohol is the driving force behind this borderline insanity, much like it is the driving force behind the father’s push to the brink of insanity.