Roethke, Down and Dirty

Reading through Roethke’s Words for the Wind again, I am struck by the poet’s longing for, the urgent desire for, physical change, his wanting to awake into a new, pure form. From "The Snake":

I long to be that thing, / the pure, sensuous form

How now Proteus? Time and again, we’re given images of a kind of slop soup: weeds, compost, muck, roots, seeds – the breaking down of plant material on its way to its next form.

Weed Puller

Under the concrete benches,
Hacking at black hairy roots,--
Those lewd monkey-tails hanging from drainholes,--
Digging into the soft rubble underneath,
Webs and weeds,
Grubs and snails and sharp sticks,
Or yanking tough fern-shapes,
Coiled green and thick, like dripping smilax,
Tugging all day at perverse life:
The indignity of it!--
With everything blooming above me,
Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses,
Whose fields lovely and inviolate,--
Me down in that fetor of weeds,
Crawling on all fours,
Alive, in a slippery grave.

Why such a emphasis on changing shape, and shapes changing, being born into a new body so to speak? I read Roethke and line after line is filled with sensuous descriptions of the body embracing nature, literally soaking in it at times. It all sounds so pleasurable, and yet the speaker wants out. I have a hard time reconciling a speaker who delights so physically in nature against his skin, with the urge to leave the body behind.

Take these lines for example. With Roethke, the rather tame Eros of Wordsworth’s poems, pressing his check against a mossy stone in Nutting, becomes much more charged. Here's a grab:

Running through high grasses,
My thighs brushing against flower-crowns;
Leaning, out of all breath,
Bracing my back against a sapling,
Making it quiver with my body.

I am always a bit reluctant to buy into backward looking poems (memories I mean) that ascribe a kind of sexual undercurrent to experience like this. But what the hell, it’s Monday. I can believe anything today. Still, Roethke hates his “epidermal dress” after all.

Epidermal Macabre
Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes,--
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

Again, in The Far Field poems (by far my favorite), the urge to transcend the body; poems and passages are full of “becomings” and “beginnings” and journeys out of the self.

“I, who came back from the depths laughing too loudly, / Become another thing;”

or:

“Believing: / I’ll returns again, / as a snake or raucous bird.”

Roethke remains for me and always will be a very influential poet. The poems of The Far Field especially, with their cataloging of flora and fauna, give me something of map for writing about the sexy fields I ran through.

Roethke Outtakes - 4

Here is one more Roethke poem for the day with an early version of the last stanza in da middle. Also, two versions of "the carriages" line in stanza one. The early version there in parens.

On the Road to Woodlawn

I miss the polished brass, the powerful black horses,
the drivers creaking the seats of the baroque hearses,
the high-piled floral offerings with sentimental verses (,)
(-As the carriages passed you smelled sweat and flowers’
perfume)
The carriages reeking with varnish and stale perfume.

(Now, as if performing a task that disgraces,
the black-flagged cars, filled with anonymous faces,
hurry to where a man’s last resting place is.
--As if in the cemetery there was no sufficient room.)

I miss the pallbearers momentously taking their places,
The undertaker's obsequious grimaces,
The craned necks, the mourners' anonymous faces,
—And the eyes, still vivid, looking up from a sunken room.

Roethke Outtakes - 3

More Roethke. Not one of my favorite poems, but from a craft/diction standpoint you might be interested in some the edits he made: your thoughts/the thoughts. Here is an early and final version of Reply to Censure.

I remember that Bly essay wherein he talks about the fur of words - which I thought silly when I first read it. But not so much now. Defamers, defilers? Makes you really want to dig down to the root of the words with the OED and find out why maybe one is more precise than the other.

Reply to Censure (Early Draft)

Expect the staring eye,
The insolence of hate,
The churlish pedantry
Of those inveterate

Defilers of the good,
They mock your deepest thought
And jeer the fortitude
Whereby the good is wrought.

Though passion is reviled
And cravens cry you down,
Delight keeps undefiled
A wisdom of its own.

Hope has a toughened skin
That keeps sufficient store
Of dignity within,
And quiet at the core.

Reply to Censure (Final Draft)

Repulse the staring eye,
The hostile gaze of hate,
And check the pedantry
Of those inveterate

Defamers of the good,
They mock the deepest thought
Condemn the fortitude
Whereby true work is wrought.

Though just men are reviled
When cravens cry them down,
The brave keep undefiled
A wisdom of their own.

The bold wear toughed skin
That keeps sufficient store
Of dignity within,
And quiet at the core.

Germinal - Uncollected Roethke

Here's an uncollected (pretty sure), maybe unpublished, Roethke poem.

Replete with the usual mix of seeds, pipes, moisture, sprouts, the color grey ... it also has undertones of Dolor. Root Cellar and Forcing House cover this territory better, but I like it a bit.

Germinal

Slowly, slowly, without cracking the thinnest varnish,
A building settles.
There are many changes without the drama, days without sunset,
Merging of mist and mist, boredom upon boredom;
Cities of fog and ambiguous pigeons;
Lacklustre eyes that see only grey like the lion.

Drop by drop the last grey day leaks through a rain pipe;
A potato sprout pokes through rotting burlap;
Cold seed, long buried in a crush of mud and sticks,
Begins to stir;
In the vein, in the long vine,
Time matures.

Roethke Outtakes - 2

Continuing with the Roethke outtakes. Here is a version of Long Live the Weeds with the lines he ultimately changed, cut. The final version comes after.

Long Live the Weeds - Early Version

Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm,
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil,
(All things unholy or perverse,)
All things unholy, marred by curse
The ugly of the universe.
(These do I cherish, that provide
A burden for the back of pride,)
The rough, the wicked, and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit,
And earn the right to stand or sit,
(Hope, love, create, or drink and die, --)
Hope, love, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I.

Long Live the Weeds - CP Version

Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm!
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil,
All things unholy, marred by curse
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked, and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit,
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, love, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I.

Loins, Thighs, Breasts - Roethke Outtakes

I found quite a few early and alternative versions of Roethke poems (in his collected letters I think) and typed them up years ago. A lot of pages actually, and I will post a few more as the weeks go by.

I have tried to call out with parenthesis and italics those lines, words, etc., that don’t appear in the final Collected Poems version, or lines that change, punctuation adjustments, etc. I am sure there's a better way to do it, but you'll get the idea comparing the two. Here is the first.

To My Sister – Early Version

O my sister remember the stars the tears the trains
The woods in spring the leaves the scented lanes
Recall the gradual dark the snow’s unmeasured fall
The naked fields the cloud’s immaculate folds
Recount each childhood pleasure: the skies of azure
The pageantry of wings the eye’s bright treasures
(Remember too the loins from whence you sprung the limbs
Within the grave before you have this love)
Keep faith with present joys refuse to choose
Defer the vice of flesh the irrevocable choice
(Rejoice in narrow thighs in)
Cherish the (wintry) eyes (the buds of breasts) the proud incredible
Poise.

To My Sister – CP version

O my sister remember the stars the tears the trains
The woods in spring the leaves the scented lanes
Recall the gradual dark and the snow’s unmeasured fall
The naked fields and the cloud’s immaculate folds
Recount each childhood pleasure: the skies of azure
The pageantry of wings the eye’s bright treasure.

Keep faith with presents joys and refuse to choose
Defer the vice of flesh the irrevocable choice
Cherish the eyes the proud incredible poise
Walk boldly my sister but do not deign to give
Remain secure from pain preserve thy hate thy heart.

Thighs, loins, breast buds? Good cuts if you ask me. The turn at the end of the final version is quite a leap from the early version. I am always interested in comparing versions when I can find them, mulling over why maybe this word, why not the other. More of a curiosity for me than anything.