A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke

A constellation of essays that reanimates the work of this pivotal twentieth-century American poet for a new century. This volume is the first to reconsider Roethke's work in terms of the expanded critical approaches to literature that have emerged since his death in 1963. Editor William Barillas and over forty contributors, including highly respected literary scholars, critics, and writers such as Peter Balakian, Camille Paglia, Jay Parini, and David Wojahn, collectively make a case for Roethke's poetry as a complete, unified, and evolving body of work. The accessible essays employ a number of approaches, including formalism, ecocriticism, reader-response, and feminist critique to explicate the poetics, themes, and the biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Roethke's work. "This volume is the first to reconsider Roethke's work in terms of the expanded critical approaches to literature that have emerged since his death in 1963. The forty-four contributors include highly respected literary scholars, critics, and writers, such as Peter Balakian, Camille Paglia, Jay Parini, and David Wojahn, who collectively make a case for Roethke's poetry as a complete, unified, and evolving body of work. The accessible essays employ a number of approaches, including formalism, ecocriticism, reader-response, and feminist critique to explicate the poetics, themes, and the biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Roethke's work"-- Provided by publisher This timely and accessible companion to the work of twentieth-century American poet Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) gathers essays that illuminate his poetics, themes, and the contexts of his poems through the diverse critical approaches that have emerged in the past five decades.