Death as a Theme in Theodore's Roethke's Poetry

Theodore Roethke spent much of his childhood working and playing in his father's greenhouses. Later, he was to call the greenhouse "my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth" (Sullivan 22). Thus, ecological metaphors play a significant role in his poetry and he applies a theory of death as a transformation rather than an ending. In his earlier poems, such as "Cuttings," "Cuttings (later)," and "Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," he focuses his attention on birth and growth, the first stages in the ecological process. However, even in these early poems, Roethke views the willful, tenacious struggle of plants into being as a drive against death (Sullivan 22). In his subsequent poems, such as "The Far Field" and "In a Dark Time," he explores the natural process of death in relation to the birth of the spirit. His final poems, such as "Wish for a Young Wife," seem to conclude that to love fully, which is the aim of life, one must undergo the death of the personal self.

Balakian argues that Roethke's early greenhouse poems have an organic shape (Balakian 51). At this stage, the intensity of action and interaction in the poems provides the elemental shape for his unfolding natural, psychic, spiritual, and poetic journey into self-discovery (Balakian 51-52). "Cuttings" is the opening poem in this sequence, and Balakian refers to it as Roethke's vision of an original condition. At this stage,