The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 12/25/2007)

[RetroLounge]

She

I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss? --
My lady laughs, delighting in what is.
If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.
She makes space lonely with a lovely song.
She lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.

We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.

I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.

Theodore Roethke

**************************

:hi:

RL

[Guava Jelly]

1. I had to read it twice to fully understand it.

Very nice..
:hi:

[Droopy]

2. Is that a sonnet?

It looks like one from what I remember from english class. Whatever it is it is masterfully constructed. I don't know when it was written, but the words are timeless.

[xchrom]

3. in other words -- the earth moved.

[lizziegrace]

4. ....

:hug:

[BlueIris]

5. Theodore Roethke was freakishly brilliant.

Said to have a knowledge of the canon that rivaled Dr. Johnson's.

[RetroLounge]

6. Just beginning to dig deeper into his work

Found a book of his prose writings and notebooks.

He was Richard Hugo's teacher too.

:hi:

RL

[hisownpetard]

7. Lovely sonnet. Here's my favorite Roethke poem, if I may:

My Papa's Waltz


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.

Roethke was a master of the metrical, and this poem seems to replicate the cadence of the waltz.
And then there's the eternal unanswerable question: is this a nostalgic look back to his childhood, or is he revealing an abusive relationship between himself and his father, with the mother as enabler, standing silently on the sidelines?

[RetroLounge]

8. I've always loved that poem...

:hug:

RL

[hisownpetard]

9. So what's your take on it - drunk devoted dad, or hints of child abuse?

[RetroLounge]

10. I lean toward drunk devoted dad...

:hi:

RL