Getting to know Roethke

Of course I've started with wikipedia, because I want the most accurate and scholarly info. First thing that catches my eye is this:
"an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm and natural imagery."

*gasp*

I want to be an American poet who publishes volumes of poetry characterized by rhythm and imagery! lol So I think I'm headed in the right direction by choosing to look more closely into Roethke's work after being exposed to a few of his pieces in workshop this week.

His bio on PBS.org states that his influences were Blake, Yeats, and Auden so I could look more into those poets as well. My professor had a great family tree analogy about poets and I can see it at work here. Just pick a poet, find their influences, and go from there. Then your own work becomes influenced by their work and you become the newest extension on the family tree.

So now I'm reading his Collected Poems which has the full text of all of his books. UVA has it for free on e-text! Yay!

First impressions: His first book "Open House" has some rhyming, sing-songy, dare I say even emo stuff so far lol. The poems the professor handed out in class were all from his second volume, "Lost Son," and did not rhyme like the few I've read so far.

We'll see where this goes.

Opinions expressed at 3:14 am are those of a sleepless MFA applicant and do not necessarily reflect the position of this blog's author.

So I just googled myself on a whim and came across this comment on the blog of the journal that published one of my pieces:

"I just wanted to say how much I liked both Rapture, by (ME!!!)…….(for its length and complexity and effective way of dealing about race and childhood …..and..."

Thanks wonderful person who just made my sleepless night. Cyber kisses and best wishes to you.

*All rhymes are unintentional at this hour and should not reflect upon my poetic talent*

Pardon the legal disclaimers. Prior to finding this comment I was researching law schools...just in case I suck. lol

What Would You Tell Them?

So I went ahead and accepted my guy friend's offer to be my man LOL After his response to the poem I shared with him, how could I not? So I told him I'm going to send him poems with questions everyday. I think it will be good for both of us. So here's how that went today:

I Go Back to May 1937
by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

--
My Question: if you could go back to the day your mother met your father, what would you say to them?

His answer:
I would tell them they aren’t right for each other.
I would let them know that the best thing for them is to keep moving and not look back.
I would tell my mother that life can be full of challenges.
I would tell her to join the Army and see the world.
I would tell her to invest her money, so she will never be without.
I would tell her to not have children too soon and burden herself.
I would tell her to love herself before she forgets how.
I would watch myself fade from existence.
--

I like that. It's very self-sacrificing. His mother's happiness and opportunities matter to him most....more than his own. See why I've allowed him to have me? LOL

I'm formulating a poetic response to my own question. Maybe that will be my evening writing. We shall see.

Sharing Poems

So I have the luxury of having a guy friend who actually seems to enjoy discussing my poetry with me and well, poetry in general too, anyone's. So that's nice. So I figured I could be a poetry nerd with him and I sent him a poem from Claudia Emerson's Late Wife that I liked and I asked him this question along with it:

What would you do if you met me after my husband passed away and the dog that I'd shared with him died?

Here's the poem and then his response:

Old English

I buried the sheepdog for you, trying
to save you from that grief, dug through muscled
roots, past rain-wet earth to harder, drier
soil that did not cling, but scoured the shovel.

Even the expected, smaller death recalled
the other. I transplanted sedum from the garden
to mark the place and obscure it.

--Claudia Emerson

Oh...it seems like she started this poem off like a sonnet. There's a abab rhyme scheme and 10 syllable lines in the first stanza. Many of the other poems in that section of the book are sonnets. I'm guessing this was a complete sonnet that she revised down to this. I kinda wanna email her and ask her or something. Hmmm...maybe I'll wait and see if I can come up with more questions. That would be fun.

Okay so his response:

I would help you bury the dog before I brought a new puppy home. Anyone have a shovel? Time for new memories with the new man in your life.