Four Critics’ Perspective of Theodore Roethke's Elegy for Jane

Indeed, he finds her beautiful— not in the typical romantic way, but rather in the way he finds nature beautiful. The speaker makes multiple comparisons between Jane and nature, whether it be her plant-like locks of hair, or a bird, which is made three times; Jane is a wren, a sparrow, and a “skittery pigeon”. Furthermore, the speaker has clearly paid close attention to Jane as shown by his detailed observations. In the first stanza, he reminisces and waxes poetic about her hair, her smile, and her quirky personality. Hence, the speaker adores Jane for not only her little details but also in how she symbolizes the larger beauty of

“One Art” is a villanelle filled with sad sentiments of encouragement towards accepting loss. Elizabeth Bishop uses her tone to pull emotions from the reader that could be confusion and disagreement. Her tone deeply impacts the reader in such a way that it causes him/her to seriously think of accepting her opinion and advice. The capturing way she uses her tone in her word choice shows the reader her natural inflexion when she speaks. The tone of her work even affects her characterization. In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop uses tone to convey a character of false casualty, while also using it to emphasize the very heavy impact of her diction.

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“is a profound portrayal of the debilitating process of grief human beings undergo when confronted with a horrific tragedy. The response to that ultimate pain is the predominance of numbness, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-“(1-2). This is a poem that must be read slowly to become saturated in the melancholy, the dehumanization of suffering as it affects each aspect of the body without reference to the chaotic emotionality of it. The abundance of metaphors within Dickinson’s poem provides the means to empathize the necessity of numbness. It is also through the use of punctuation and capitalization, depicting the presence of a

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.

Jane Kenyon, the author of “Otherwise”, once said, “The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.” Jane died a few years later after writing this poem, and it was published after her death. “Otherwise” is a meaningful poem that describes the tender truth about death in a definite but beautiful way; it also emphasizes the pleasant normalcy in life, and how everything will change.

Cynthia Lee Kotana says it perfectly when she states in her excerpt, "In the first descriptive octave, personification, the giving of human attributes to inanimate objects, is used to drive home the persuasive mood of the poem." (Kotana, Paragraph 6, Sentence1). She is stating that it is at this point in the poem where Roethke begins to paint a picture of the idea he wants to get across to the reader. It seems possible that he was trying to switch the roles of the humans and the inanimate objects. After all, if it was possible for a pencil to feel sadness, or for a manila folder to feel misery, then is it not possible for a human to feel absolutely nothing? The same nothing that we know all of the inanimate objects around us feel? This was a very great technique used by Roethke in trying to bring the reader to look a little deeper into his poem than just to see "misery" and "sadness" and to think what a dark poem it is. It is truly a great skill and takent to be able to make the reader see that he is bringing the "Dead" to life and the "living" to absolute

This idea begins the poem "Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," which begins with the word "Gone." Therefore, the poem begins with death although it is essentially a poem about childhood and the birth of life. The poem suggests lost integrity, and the three "ancient ladies," are main figures in his memory and symbols of myth in his imagination (Balakian 53). For Roethke, the three women are concurrently nurturers of life in the greenhouse and muses who symbolize the awareness of his creative personality, encouraging the force of his imagination and bringing him to a recognition of his gift and calling (Balakian 61).

As I mentioned earlier as a child Theodore Roethke spent a lot of his time in the greenhouse his father and uncle owned. He observed nature and its true beauty in unique ways. The years he spent in that greenhouse truly helped him become successful in his writing career. A good number of his most famous works, as well as his less notable works reference nature in some way. I will discuss some of these poems showing the references to nature and repeated themes. Roethke tends to relate life and death to nature using imagery and detailed descriptions to captivate the readers.

The short story “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor tells of Mrs. May, an old, bitter, and selfish woman. She thinks badly of everyone around her, including her own two sons. It also compares her family to that of the Greenleaf family, who Mrs. May sees as inferior to her. O’Connor unveils the story of Mrs. May and her demise through the use of point of view, character, and symbolism. She uses the third person omniscient view to give the reader a sense of Mrs. May’s character, and the symbols of the bull, and the conflict between the bull and Mrs. May to show Mrs. May’s destruction as well as give the story a deeper meaning of God’s grace.

Both the “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson contain age-old themes. These themes focus on inevitable feelings and events of life; love and death. Although both “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contain the two themes, they differ greatly in how they are presented and what they represent. In “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” a husband traveling away from his wife is consoling her.

“Wish for a Young Wife”, by Theodore Roethke, may seem to be more than just a simple epithalamium, for the way the poet presents his writing compels the reader to question his true intentions. Nevertheless, although it is easy for the reader to trip down this path, a closer reading, in which one pays particular attention to aspects such the poem's imagery, rhyme scheme, meter, and parallelism, allows them to acknowledge that as the poet appreciates his wife and elaborates on what he wants for her, it is in fact the ambiguity of the poem that doubles the effect of his sincerity and love for his young wife.

“Roethke was a great poet, the successor to Frost and Stevens in modern American poetry, and it is the measure of his greatness that his work repays detailed examination” (Parini 1). Theodore Roethke was a romantic who wrote in a variety of styles throughout his long successful career. However, it was not the form of his verse that was important, but the message being delivered and the overall theme of the work. Roethke was a deep thinker and often pondered about and reflected on his life. This introspection was the topic of much of his poetry. His analysis of his self and his emotional experiences are often expressed in his verse. According to Ralph J. Mills Jr., “this self interest was the primary matter of

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw in 1908 and grew up in the house now preserved as The Theodore Roethke Home Museum. He worked in his grandfather’s floral company, which his experience there inspired many of his poems. After graduating college, he taught at several colleges. He would later receive a Pulitzer Prize for “The Waking”, which included the short poem “Elegy for Jane”, along with two National Book Awards and a Bollingen Prize from Yale in 1959 (1). In conclusion, while visiting with friends at Bainbridge Island in 1963, Washington, Roethke suffered a fatal heart attack. During the last years

The principal of death is fundamental in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. In her work, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” (1862),

The poet uses visual imagery to show the reader how the narrator is feeling in the poem. Roethke gives the reader an illustration of the conflict occurring in his head by using colours to allow the reader to have a deeper understanding of the poem. The poet uses the word ‘dark’ as a way to show the reader how he feels there is no light left in the world, “Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.”(19), the use of colours helps the reader to truly comprehend the emotions the speaker is feeling. Another way Roethke uses visual imagery is by creating a lyrical poem. The poet writes the poem to address the