Roethke, Water Father

Abstract

ff EN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH Roethke remains, despite shadows of it doubt about his ultimate value, a seminal voice in contemporary poetry. He must be one of the most uneven poets ever called great in serious critical writing. He consistently explored new territory only to retreat into the security of old and often secondhand styles. He could be as false to his deepest visions as he was to his unique voice. But if his poetry sounds with echoes from the past it also reverberates into the future. For all his occasional clumsiness Roethke is a poet's poet, essential not only as a teacher of such students as Richard Hugo, William Stafford, David Waggoner, James Wright and others but as a dominant influence on most of our recent mystical or oracular poets, poets of transcendent landscapes and magical transformations. Perhaps these new surrealist romantics have become our central poets. The three who most obviously echo Roethke-Robert Bly, James Dickey, and Sylvia Plath-are themselves now centers of influence. Though all three tend to occupy narrow and deep poetic areas, like Roethke returning almost obsessively to one subject or cluster of subjects, they function as models for a wide variety of younger poets.2 They cannot be said to form a school. Though