Get Out Wednesday: Theodore Roethke Centennial

To mark the centennial of Theodore Roethke’s birth, poets Linda Bierds, Andrew Feld, Richard Kenney, Colleen McElroy, Heather McHugh, and Pimone Triplett are gathering to read and talk about Roethke, who inspires that kind of devotion, whether you knew him personally or not. The Washington Center for the Book, Poetry Society of America, and University of Washington Creative Writing Program are throwing the party at the Seattle Public Library, in the Microsoft Auditorium. It's this Wednesday, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., and it's free.

Theodore Roethke taught at the University of Washington from 1948 until 1963, when he died. He was an undiagnosed bipolar boozer in an age that already had its share of unstabled poets: Dylan Thomas, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Robert Lowell--Lowell and Roethke were friends, points out TIME, and both made poetry speak for their treatment.

Colleagues praised Roethke's hectic, incandescent verse and gossiped about his violent breakdowns. He described his electroshock therapy in rhyme: "Swift's servant beat him./ Now they use/ A current flowing/ From a fuse." The jolts were useless. He died of a sudden heart attack at 55.

HistoryLink has a good piece by a former Roethke student that hews pretty closely to what it was like at the time, before the memorializing set in. We love the factoid about Roethke drinking at the "original Red Robin, which was also something of a bohemian joint at the time." Here is a collection of some of Roethke's best known poems: "In a Dark Time" shows off his gifts for rhythm and rhyme, as well as, of course, his continual struggle to stretch words around the extremity of his experiences.

Theodore Roethke teaching at the University of Washington, photo courtesy of the UW.