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The Waking: Poems: 1933 - 1953
Poem
- GenresPoetryLiterature
120 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1953
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417 people want to read
About the author
Theodore Roethke
66books224followersAmerican poet Theodore Roethke published short lyrical works in
The Waking
(1953) and other collections.
Rhythm and natural imagery characterized volumes of Theodore Huebner Roethke. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking. Roethke wrote of his poetry: The greenhouse "is my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth." From childhood experiences of working in floral company of his family in Saginaw, Roethke drew inspiration. Beginning is 1941 with Open House, the distinguished poet and teacher published extensively; he received two National Book Awards among an array of honors. In 1959, Yale University awarded him the prestigious Bollingen Prize. Roethke taught at Michigan State College, (present-day Michigan State University) and at colleges in Pennsylvania and Vermont before joining the faculty of the University of Washington at Seattle in 1947.
Rhythm and natural imagery characterized volumes of Theodore Huebner Roethke. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking. Roethke wrote of his poetry: The greenhouse "is my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth." From childhood experiences of working in floral company of his family in Saginaw, Roethke drew inspiration. Beginning is 1941 with Open House, the distinguished poet and teacher published extensively; he received two National Book Awards among an array of honors. In 1959, Yale University awarded him the prestigious Bollingen Prize. Roethke taught at Michigan State College, (present-day Michigan State University) and at colleges in Pennsylvania and Vermont before joining the faculty of the University of Washington at Seattle in 1947.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 22, 2025
thoroughly enjoyed the theme of the poem "the waking", philosophical, peaceful, yet inspiring
July 10, 2008
These selected poems from 1933-1953 show Roethke's power as a poet: the deft use of form (as in "My Papa's Waltz") the exacting eye (such as in "Dolor"), etc. What happened in "Praise to the End!", the 1951 collection, though? It seems there that Roethke is trying to be ambiguous for the sake of ambiguity. The tone there is like that of his children's verse, but meaning has disappeared:
"Hear me soft ears and roundy stones!
It's a dear life I can touch.
Who's ready for pink and frisk?
My hoe eats like a goat."
I need to do some reading to see what his project was there.
Some of the "new" poems at the end, especially "A Light Breather," show his concern with "spirit" and greatly interested me. And, I'd also thought "The Waking" to be an inferior villanelle--the refrain lines seem so simplistic and boring--but in this context, at the end of this collection, it felt stronger.
"Hear me soft ears and roundy stones!
It's a dear life I can touch.
Who's ready for pink and frisk?
My hoe eats like a goat."
I need to do some reading to see what his project was there.
Some of the "new" poems at the end, especially "A Light Breather," show his concern with "spirit" and greatly interested me. And, I'd also thought "The Waking" to be an inferior villanelle--the refrain lines seem so simplistic and boring--but in this context, at the end of this collection, it felt stronger.
February 9, 2022
Reading Theodore Roethke's poems makes me feel like I'm dueling with the poet, recognizing the vigorous nature of his talent while simultaneously wresting with his frequent feints and lightning jabs of wit and insight.
It's all a very heady stew, and even though his words have been captured and locked on these pages, it feels like the (deceased) author refuses to stop mixing the broth and adding more ingredients when I least expect him to. "Forcing House" starts by describing plants within a greenhouse, but pulses with so much life it quickly escapes beyond the glass. "Night Crow" heads in the opposite direction, and is short enough to quote in full:
When I saw that clumsy crow
Flap from a wasted tree,
A shape in the mind rose up:
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.
Even in long poems such as "The Lost Son" and "O, Thou Opening, O" Roehtke manages to keep his remarkable juggling act going, and the animation and open-ended nature of a shorter poem such as "A Light Breather" means that one can keep reading and living and never having to close the book completely.
It's all a very heady stew, and even though his words have been captured and locked on these pages, it feels like the (deceased) author refuses to stop mixing the broth and adding more ingredients when I least expect him to. "Forcing House" starts by describing plants within a greenhouse, but pulses with so much life it quickly escapes beyond the glass. "Night Crow" heads in the opposite direction, and is short enough to quote in full:
When I saw that clumsy crow
Flap from a wasted tree,
A shape in the mind rose up:
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.
Even in long poems such as "The Lost Son" and "O, Thou Opening, O" Roehtke manages to keep his remarkable juggling act going, and the animation and open-ended nature of a shorter poem such as "A Light Breather" means that one can keep reading and living and never having to close the book completely.
June 15, 2019
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
February 20, 2013
The whiskey on his breath could make a small boy dizzy but I held on like death such waltzin was not easy. Read that in middle school and the rhythm still sticks.
Also the waking rocks my soul: this shaking keeps me steady.
Also the waking rocks my soul: this shaking keeps me steady.
February 13, 2017
I have known the inexorable loneliness of pencils!
March 18, 2024
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
June 5, 2019
Under-appreciated poet nowadays. “The Waking� is one of his best poems in its rhythm, its flow, repetition; a reflection of the cyclical nature of life and death. His use of natural symbolism throughout is masterful and taps into our collective unconscious. Some poems were imitative though.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
August 2, 2023
This is a remarkable collection, winner of the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. I confess that I have no basis for comparison, as all my previous Pulitzer Prize reading has been fiction and a small number of plays and books of nonfiction, no poetry books. Still, this collection seemed surprisingly uneven. As the title suggests, the book selects from previous publications—three of them—followed by a section of new poems. Those from the first volume, Open House, stuck me as fairly conventional and not wildly memorable rhymed poems, the form of which perhaps should have surprised me less, as the Roethke poem I used to teach most frequently, “My Papa’s Waltz� is, of course rhymed iambic trimeter—but that’s a vast oversimplification of its form. Even so, there are some amazing lines in this first section, like the description of what the speaker sees while taking a “Night Journey� by train: “Bridges of iron lace, / A suddenness of trees, / A lap of mountain mist.�
“My Papa’s Waltz� is in the second section, The Lost Son and Other Poems. The poems in THAT section are almost without exception mind-blowingly good. For example, I love the images, metaphors, and diction in the poem that immediately precedes the widely-anthologized “Root Cellar�:
Cuttings
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
I confess to mostly being puzzled by the third section, from Praise to the End! Although there are some wonderful turns of phrase here and there, a lot of them seem, in sections, like nonsense verse for children:
I know you are my nemesis
So bibble where the pebble is.
The trouble is with No and Yes
As you can see I guess I guess.
I wish I was a pifflebob
I wish I was a funny
I wish I had ten thousand hats,
And made a lot of money.
Mind you, I have a soft spot for children's nonsense verse. A lot of the poems in this section are long, and I don’t follow how they hold together, but I’m perfectly willing to imagine the fault here is my own. Anyway, I understand why people are puzzled by a lot of poetry.
The new poems, in the final section, are easier to follow than those in the third section, and this is where the title poem, “The Waking,� is located, as well as the devastating “Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse).� Here’s just one line that I noted, from the poem “I Cry, Love! Love!� (not the greatest title): “A fish jumps, shaking out flakes of moonlight.�
The way I see it, even though I didn’t love every poem in this collection, any book that contains some of the best poems of the twentieth century is prize worthy. For the record, in this collection, in the order in which they appear are
“Root Cellar�
“My Papa’s Waltz�
DZǰ�
“Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse)�
“The Waking�
One might imagine that a Pulitzer Prize winner would be fairly easy to access, but there are no copies of this book in the North Carolina public library system, and finding an affordable copy to buy was remarkably difficult. Completing the very first leg of my personal seventy Pulitzers challenge proved to be surprisingly tough, but so far it’s working out nicely.
Now, on to 1955.
“My Papa’s Waltz� is in the second section, The Lost Son and Other Poems. The poems in THAT section are almost without exception mind-blowingly good. For example, I love the images, metaphors, and diction in the poem that immediately precedes the widely-anthologized “Root Cellar�:
Cuttings
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
I confess to mostly being puzzled by the third section, from Praise to the End! Although there are some wonderful turns of phrase here and there, a lot of them seem, in sections, like nonsense verse for children:
I know you are my nemesis
So bibble where the pebble is.
The trouble is with No and Yes
As you can see I guess I guess.
I wish I was a pifflebob
I wish I was a funny
I wish I had ten thousand hats,
And made a lot of money.
Mind you, I have a soft spot for children's nonsense verse. A lot of the poems in this section are long, and I don’t follow how they hold together, but I’m perfectly willing to imagine the fault here is my own. Anyway, I understand why people are puzzled by a lot of poetry.
The new poems, in the final section, are easier to follow than those in the third section, and this is where the title poem, “The Waking,� is located, as well as the devastating “Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse).� Here’s just one line that I noted, from the poem “I Cry, Love! Love!� (not the greatest title): “A fish jumps, shaking out flakes of moonlight.�
The way I see it, even though I didn’t love every poem in this collection, any book that contains some of the best poems of the twentieth century is prize worthy. For the record, in this collection, in the order in which they appear are
“Root Cellar�
“My Papa’s Waltz�
DZǰ�
“Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse)�
“The Waking�
One might imagine that a Pulitzer Prize winner would be fairly easy to access, but there are no copies of this book in the North Carolina public library system, and finding an affordable copy to buy was remarkably difficult. Completing the very first leg of my personal seventy Pulitzers challenge proved to be surprisingly tough, but so far it’s working out nicely.
Now, on to 1955.
November 17, 2024
I've been reading a lot of past Pulitzer poetry winners, whichis why I chose this volume. Prior to this, all I knew of Roethke was his sublime Elegy for Jane (which is included in this collection).
This volume is a bit of a greatest hits anthology, a mixed bag, with selections from:
* Open House - charmingly down to earth and grounded
* The Lost Son - full of wonderful descriptions of gardening, I really loved these
* Praise to the Ends - really really weird, like he took too much LSD before writing - were these meant to be sung rather than read? these were a massive change from his earlier stuff and I didn't particularly like these, BUT buried in the bizarre chaff were some killer lines, like The deep stream remembers: / Once I was a pond. See below for the full poem that includes that line.
* New Poems (including the aforementioned Elegy)
I loved the poems from The Lost Son and if I could find that volume I'd probably give it five stars, but the long poems from Praise were just so weird, I can't give this book more than three stars.
This volume is a bit of a greatest hits anthology, a mixed bag, with selections from:
* Open House - charmingly down to earth and grounded
* The Lost Son - full of wonderful descriptions of gardening, I really loved these
* Praise to the Ends - really really weird, like he took too much LSD before writing - were these meant to be sung rather than read? these were a massive change from his earlier stuff and I didn't particularly like these, BUT buried in the bizarre chaff were some killer lines, like The deep stream remembers: / Once I was a pond. See below for the full poem that includes that line.
* New Poems (including the aforementioned Elegy)
I loved the poems from The Lost Son and if I could find that volume I'd probably give it five stars, but the long poems from Praise were just so weird, I can't give this book more than three stars.
Give Way, Ye Gates
1
Believe me, knot of gristle, I bleed like a tree;
I dream of nothing but boards;
I could love a duck.
Such music in a skin!
A bird sings in the bush of your bones.
Tufty, the water's loose.
Bring me a finger. This dirt's lonesome for grass.
Are the rats dancing? The cats are.
And you, cat after great milk and vasty fishes,
A moon loosened from a stag's eye,
Twiced me nicely, --
In the green of my sleep,
In the green.
2.
Mother of blue and the many changes of hay,
This tail hates a flat path.
I've let my nose out;
I could melt down a stone, --
How is it with the long birds?
May I look too, loved eye?
It's a wink beyond the world.
In the slow rain, who's afraid?
We're king and queen of the right ground.
I'll risk the winter for you.
You tree beginning to know,
You whisper of kidneys,
We'll swinge the instant! --
With jots and jogs and cinders on the floor:
The sea will be there, the great squashy shadows,
Biting themselves perhaps;
The shrillest frogs;
And the ghost of some great howl
Dead in a wall.
In the high-noon of thighs,
In the springtime of stones,
We'll stretch with the great stems.
We'll be at the business of what might be
Looking toward what we are.
3
You child with a beast's heart,
Make me a bird or a bear!
I've played with the fishes
Among the unwrinkling ferns
In the wake of a ship of wind;
But now the instant ages,
And my thought hunts another body.
I'm sad with the little owls.
4
Touch and arouse. Suck and sob. Curse and mourn.
It's a cold scrape in a low place.
The dead crow dries on a pole.
Shapes in the shade
Watch.
The mouth asks. The hand takes.
These wings are from the wrong nest.
Who stands in a hole
Never spills.
I hear the clap of an old wind.
The cold knows when to come.
What beats in me
I still bear.
The deep stream remembers:
Once I was a pond.
What slides away
Provides.
February 18, 2015
I really liked this poem. It talked about waking up very peacefully
December 24, 2017
I will always adore Theodore. Will review after the holidays.
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