Once More, The Round by Theodore Roethke

What's greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.

Now I adore my life
With the Bird, the abiding Leaf,
With the Fish, the questing Snail,
And the Eye altering All;
And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake;

And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.

I was so happy when I read this poem. Roethke had hard life and here it looks as if he finally found his peace. Here Roethke writes of his life without stress and tension. He starts of by wondering about the unknown and almost seeing the answers. They get clearer and clearer. The turn in the poem is on line five and it’s not only the turn of the poem, but it seems it is also the shift in Roethke’s life. “Now I adore my life.”

Roethke writes that he finds an eye that sees all. In the Hindu and Buddhist religions, there is a third eye. This is the spiritual eye. When the other two look out, this one looks inside one’s self. It is used to find yourself and peace. Roethke believes he has found his third eye. He no longer feels lost. His questions have been answered and he has found his inner harmony. He understands and accepts that the world changes and will always change but now he has the foundation to move with it.

The tone in this poem, changes slightly from stanza to stanza. The first four lines are filled with seeking, and yearning; chasing the knowledge that he can feel is just so close. The next six lines are joyous in the presence of finally finding solace. He learned what he needed. The last two lines sing of peace and closure. He accepts that the world will continue to move and dance but now he can dance too.

 

The Sloth by Theodore Roethke

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard-

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows

Roethke suffered great loss in his childhood. He lost both his father and uncle. He also lost the greenhouses his father owned. They were the one place he felt at home and at peace. As he grew older he began to feel more and more isolated from other people. He often felt he was missing, or left out of some big secret that made everything make sense.  He went through phases of deep manic depression. It is thought that he wrote “The Sloth” during one of these times, but because he was never diagnosed there is no way to be sure.

“The Sloth” deals with Roethke’s frustration at the slow pace humans move at. If he had been in a manic state he would have felt that everyone else truly was moving slower. In the poem the speaker asked the sloth a question but is never given an answer. The speaker is so maddened by the fact that the sloth won’t answer. He knows the sloth knows and that frustrates him even more because the sloth is such a lazy, slow moving creature.  

Roethke seemed to have felt as if something of himself was missing; as if he needed just one piece of information to make everything clear to him.  He was exasperated by the slowness of humanity but also the inability to find all the answers before too much time passes. There is an inner battle between wanting time to slow down to gain more knowledge but also wanting people to move faster. This concept is literally paralleled by the tension between the sloth and the speaker.

The tone of this poem seems very carefree and loose, but a closer look proves otherwise. The turn in the poem occurs in the last line. Without this line, the whole meaning of the poem would change. This is where Roethke lets himself into the role of the speaker. HE  knows the sloth knows, not the speaker. The poem becomes so much more personal after the last line is read.

 I find it almost heartbreaking. Roethke feels so left out, almost lost. He is so close to the answers only to be turned away by a lazy creature. I feel his life would have been so much less painful had he gotten the medical treatment he needed. But then I wonder, would he have been the amazing poet he was?

The Bat by Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face

 

Roethke wrote “The Bat” in an attempt to make others see that fearing the unknown is wrong. Roethke went through stages of mental health and because of this he was fired from not one but two different teaching positions. The doctors at the time couldn’t diagnosis him. The school’s feared his outbreaks instead of trying to get him help.

People today fear what they don’t understand. I think that is part of the reason this poem hold so much meaning. People will always fear the unknown. The only way to fix this problem is to educate ourselves. Knowledge is the key. Roethke used the image of the bat because some many do believe the stories of “blood sucking creatures”. The true is the bats are mostly harmless and even benefit humans by eating bugs such as mosquitoes.

  Roethke depicts the bat as whimsical, which isn’t a common portrayal of a bat. The end rhymes create a clear line between each statement. He assumed people that there is no need to fear the bat. Roethke created an abstract diction by choosing words like brushes, amiss, and crazy figure. This subconsciously furthers the notion of false or unclear knowledge verses the truth and fact. He didn’t want humans to fear the bat because it is similar to them, just like he didn’t want himself and other mentally ill people to be feared because they are slightly different. Some of the most gifted individuals in our history were once feared because they were “weird”, “odd” or “different”. These words shouldn’t be used as negative connotations of people things or object s we don’t understand

                I personally think, Roethke just wanted people to try to understand the things they fear. You might be shocked to discover the thing you feared is more like you than you thought.

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I instantly loved this poem from the first time I read it. I reminded me of my own dad, not that he drank a lot of whisky or that we trashed the kitchen, but of the tender memory. If a child is lucky and lives in a loving home, they will grow up with a few perfect memories. These are the types of memories that are crystal clear even years later.

This memory was probably made only a few years before Roethke’s father’s death. After reading this poem I got my ideas together and then started to research what others had thought of it. I was shocked to see how many people thought this was a poem about an abusive father. I simple can’t agree with that. I looked into Roethke’s history and found that his father was not abusive. He owned a greenhouse business and worked with his hands all day. The Great Depression had made men tough but not mean. Roethke’s father loved him. I actually found that Roethke’s relationship with his father was on better terms than the one with his mother, which would explain her frown. She was sad that didn’t have the type of relationship with her son that her husband had.

I think most people saw the words: whiskey, death, battered, beat time, and palm cake hard by dirt; and assumed this was an abusive dance but a closer look proved otherwise.  The boy clung like death. Like humans can never escape death, Roethke never wanted his father to leave or die. The choice of “slid” verses “fell”, make the second stanza a pleasant memory verses an abusive one. Many will miss this, but it defines the poem. The pans slid from the shelf. They didn’t fall or crash after being hit or thrown. They slid from the vibration of the two romping around the kitchen. Even the word “romping” brings images of playfulness. The fathers knuckle was battered and his palm caked with dirt because he worked all day in the dirt, providing for his family.

At the end of the poem, the boy is clinging to his father’s shirt never wanting this moment end. I see this night filled with laughter and love, with a child saying “no please, five more minutes” and the father giving in because this has been the best part if his week. I can’t see how people have read this and not seen the care and love in this relationship. As I said in the beginning, this is one of my favorite if not my favorite poem.

After thought!

I challenge everyone who reads this blog to read the poem one more time and think of your perfect memory. Leave a comment if you agree (or disagree) with what I’ve said or if you have a memory like this!