Customer Description: Explain what the author "confesses" in one or more of his poems. (Either "My Papa's Waltz", "Prayer", "I knew a Woman", or "In a Dark Time"). Use specific information from the personal profile to help you make connections. Identify specific lines from the poems that indicate "confessional" style.

Paper Body: 

Before speaking about confessional poetry of Theodore Roethke, I think it is necessary to make at least a short review about the poet's not easy life and then turn to his poetry. I'd like to say that Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. His father, Otto Roethke had immigrated from Germany being a child with his father. As a matter of fact there they decided to buy twenty-two acres of land on which they established a market garden. 

Fortunately their business was successful, and soon Otto married Helen Huebner; in two years Theodore was born and father bought a new house. As a small boy Theodore was especially affected by the large field and green house which were situated near their house and they became an important image in his poetry. When Roethke was a sophomore at high school his father died of cancer. And though it seemed that the boy accepted the news calmly, however his poems that describe the death of his father show deep and lasting affect on him, as well as great admiration and love to his father. 

For instance, in "My Papa's Waltz" Roethke captures the earthly vitality of his father and some of his own joy and bafflement as the young victim of his father's extra exuberant energy. The poem is not so much about child abuse but about a young boy who is swept up his father's enjoyment of life. Although the language is harsh the overall image in the poem shows awe and love. His attitude towards his own father (gardener) had been contradictory. On the one hand he saw his father the hardened taskmaster, demanding perfection from his son and humiliating him when he failed to do so. 

At the same time Theodore Roethke it is an undeniable fact that he had admire the life giving quality in his father as both his own progenitor as well as the gardener who could bring plant life from the soil. As matter of fact the future poet did quite well in the college. However his real interest and dream was in training himself to be a professional writer. Although Theodore Roethke took a general course of study but he was much more concentrated on the literature and language. And it was during his undergraduate years that Roethke began to write poetry. 

After graduation he entered Michigan Law School, but then withdrew to pursue a master's degree in literature and entered the Harvard Graduate School. Unfortunately for money problems in his family he had to leave this school too and find a job. He was hired as a teacher at a small Presbyterian college. Roethke he stayed there for four years and was liked by his students. Then he went to Michigan State College. In 1935 he had the first series of mental breakdowns which were to plague him the rest of his life. He was accepted at Pennsylvania State. Then he changed another college. 

In 1945 another manic depression forced the poet into confined treatment. What was interesting is that in December 1952, he accidentally met his former student Beatrice O'Connell and in a month they were married.
It is important to note that in 1953 Doubleday introduced a selection of Roethke's poems, the Walking and in 1954 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this work. In 1957 he had a serious mental breakdown, after his recovery Doubleday published Words for the Wind.
The critical reception was quite favourable - he received the Bollingen Prize and the national book award for this volume. Also in March 1961 Roethke's collection of children's poems was published. Theodore remained in Seattle for the last years of his life, teaching, working on the poems that appear posthumously and making frequent trips to receive awards and give reading. 

On the first of August 1963 while swimming in a friend's pool Roethke had a coronary occlusion from which he could not be revived and died. He was buried in Saginaw. I think it is enough about the poet's biography and now I'd like to view his poetry on the example of some poems. But before I want to say that Theodore Roethke invoked the need to discover nature anew, to bring the earth back into our thoughts where the enormity of its presence dwarfs us. And although Roethke used guidance from other poets, but contrary to them his poems never separate man from nature. 

I'd like to mention Roethke's poetry is firmly rooted in the realm of his own experience and the craft of his poesy is as sensual as the world that surrounds him. For him boundaries between outer and inner dissolve, the natural world seems a landscape of psyche, just as the voyage inward leads to natural things - root, leaves and flowers as emblems of the recesses of the human being. For Theodore recreation involves a journey back to the beginning of self. In some of his poems such as "The Lost Son", for instance, the persona must travel through the subhuman depth of the psyche into the world of the child. Only by seeing through the innocent eyes of the child can the persona move towards his final emergence into light. 

Firstly, I'll take "I knew a woman". It is interesting to mention that it is the first purely sensual, hyperbolic and sentimental love poem. Though it seems quite innocent to those who are not fond of literature and read only for showing that they are interested, nevertheless the closer examination reveals that the poem's words like its lady, move "more ways than one". Some critiques seemed embarrassed by this poem's sentiment and exaggeration...

Use our writing service by filling this request form to order your sample term paper today.