Poet Theodore Roethke "He invented a vocabulary of metamorphosis. He uprooted his environment for unfolding images, replayed light, objects, emotions back to us in juxtapositions never seen or heard before. Inside that darkly blooming world where he debated with God, death and all things green, lovely visions struck him... We have appointed our kids and our artists keepers of our flattened, post-industrialized consciences. Our poets are lasers of sensibility, feeling, seeing, perceiving with an intensity we don't dare. And they become in this transaction the victim of their own awareness and our staggering unawareness. Thus Theodore Roethke." Life magazine, 1972 Theodore H. Roethke, who served on the UW faculty from 1947 until his death in 1963, has earned a place in history as perhaps the greatest American poet of his generation. His poetry has been recognized as a national treasure. Among his many honors, Roethke won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954 and the National Book Award in 1959. Roethke's best known works are poems that incorporate memories from his childhood of his father's greenhouse. These are considered by many to be his greatest achievement. | |
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