Nature in the Poems of Theodore Roethke, Essay Example

The poetry of Theodore Roethke creates unique natural world inhabited with various species of plants and animals whose images became transient in his works. Childhood memories, namely his father’s flower greenhouses, provided him with the necessary experience to depict life of the smallest “roots” truthfully. No doubt, “Cuttings”, “Flower Dump”, “Root Cellar”, “Weed Puller”, “Transplanting” prove Roethke’s extensive knowledge of nature life.

Images of birds are multifaceted. They reveal the poet’s emotional states (joy, love, sadness); they represent a form of address to someone dear. “Elegy for Jane” is dedicated to the author’s dead student; narrator calls her wren, sparrow and pigeon.

The poet identifies himself with nature; when he is in love, the stones and bushes are dancing; bird in the tree is singing (“The Dream”).  In Roethke’s collection “North American Sequence” images of birds are present in every poem. Therefore, birds are logically perceived as an inalienable part of the nature.

Another example of the natural world related to poems of Roethke is flowers. They seem not only essence of beauty, but also recollections of Theodore’s father Otto. “The Long Waters” bring us back to poet’s young years, when he observed lilies, mottled tiger, and heliotrope, cultivated by his father.  In the poem “Otto” he depicts the greenhouse as father’s world. Author’s grief can not remain unnoticed in “world so far away”, “lost world”.

The poems of Theodore’s Roethke predecessor Emily Dickinson (over one third) also show her vocation to gardening. These personal motives develop resemblance between her works and Roetke’s ones. Flowers in her poetry usually are symbolic images of death, life, hatred, love. Poetess associated daisy, gentian, anemone, jasmine and other plants with particular connotations given by special nineteen-century floral dictionaries, but also with family members and friends.