About
Born on May 25, 1908 in Michigan and educated there, Roethke went on to Harvard before pursuing an academic career at various American universities. His first volume of verse, Open House (1941), initiated his hallmark use of plant imagery as a symbol for human flowering and decay. He followed this with autobiographical verse in The Lost Son, and Other Poems (1948) and Praise to the End! (1951), which showed him embracing the visionary style of Yeats. “The Waking” won the poet the Pulitzer Prize in 1954, while the Bollingen Prize-winning Words for the Wind is probably his best known work. After Roethke’s death in 1963 the remainder of his verse, letters, and essays were published posthumously, and a Collected Edition of the poems appeared in 1975.
–Thomas Hampson and Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold, PBS I Hear America Singing
Related Information
Songs
Despite and Still, Op. 41
Song CollectionSamuel Barber
Robert Graves
Theodore Roethke
James Joyce
Evidence of Things Not Seen
Song CollectionNed Rorem
W. H. Auden
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert Browning
Stephen Crane
Mark Doty
Robert Frost
Paul Goodman
A. E. Housman
Langston Hughes
Jane Kenyon
Rudyard Kipling
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Paul Monette
William Penn
Theodore Roethke
Walt Whitman
John Woolman
William Butler Yeats
First Meditation
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
From Whence Cometh Song
Ned Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen
Give Way, Ye Gates
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
I Knew a Woman
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
I Strolled Across an Open Field
Ned Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Two Poems of Theodore Roethke
My Lizard (Wish For a Young Love) (op. 41, no. 2)
Samuel Barber
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Despite and Still, Op. 41
Open House
Song CollectionWilliam Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Open House
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
Orchids
Ned Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Two Poems of Theodore Roethke
Poems of Love and Rain
Song CollectionNed Rorem
W. H. Auden
E. E. Cummings
Emily Dickinson
Howard Moss
Jack Larson
Kenneth Pitchford
Theodore Roethke
Donald Windham
Snake
Ned Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Song
Simon Sargon
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Intimations of Mortality
The Apparition
Ned Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain
The Nantucket Songs
Song CollectionNed Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Christina Rossetti
William Carlos Williams
The Right Thing
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
The Serpent
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
The Waking
William Bolcom
Theodore Roethke
Song Collection: Open House
Two Poems of Theodore Roethke
Song CollectionNed Rorem
Theodore Roethke
Books
Sheet Music
14 Songs on American Poetry
Composer(s): Ned Rorem
Song(s): As Adam Early in the Morning (Walt Whitman)
Early in the Morning (Robert Hillyer)
I am Rose (Gertrude Stein)
Memory (Theodore Roethke)
My Papa's Waltz (Theodore Roethke)
Night Crow (Theodore Roethke)
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come (Walt Whitman)
Root Cellar (Theodore Roethke)
Sally's Smile (Paul Goodman)
See How They Love Me (Howard Moss)
Snake (Theodore Roethke)
Such Beauty As Hurts to Behold (Paul Goodman)
The Waking (Theodore Roethke)
Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night (Walt Whitman)
Samuel Barber: Collected Songs
Composer(s): Samuel Barber
Song(s): 1. A Last Song (op. 41, no. 1)
2. My Lizard (Wish For a Young Love) (op. 41, no. 2)
3. In The Wilderness (op. 41, no. 3)
4. Solitary Hotel (op. 41, no. 4)
5. Despite and Still (op. 41, no. 5)
Open House
Composer(s): William Bolcom
Song(s): 1. Open House
2. Give Way, Ye Gates
3. The Waking
4. The Serpent
5. I Knew a Woman
6. First Meditation
7. The Right Thing
Two Poems of Theodore Roethke
Composer(s): Ned Rorem
Song(s): 1. Orchids
2. I Strolled Across an Open Field