l world of nudging and poking in "Cuttings," Roethke is moving to the more mythically suggestive "urge," "wrestle," "resurrection." Thus, Roethke has already begun the movement away from the personal self to more universal themes. Balakian also argues, however, that in this poem Roethke moves toward the inclusion of the theme of death in the poetry because, in the final moment of realization in the poem, Roethke's birth also operates as a contradictory "dying to the world" (Balakian 53). For example, Roethke says, "Slippery as fish,/I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet" ("Cuttings (later) 10-11). Balakian argues that "quailing" means both to coagulate and curdle as with a foetus at birth and to die or succumb (53). Thus, he argues that Roethke is suggesting that the intensity of the birth experience brings people close to "nonbeing" (Balakian 53).
Balakian's argument here is significant because it echoes arguments made about Roethke's later poetry, particularly the ones following his North American Sequence, which deals most explicitly with death as a theme. In those later poems, Roethke suggests that only after death of the self can people come to realize the true purpose of life: lov
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