The Somber Dance

A detailed Summary of The Somber Dance

Theodore Roethke, poet and author, has contributed many well-known pieces to American

literature. Roethke wrote close to 200 notebooks worth of poems. Only three percent of the poems in his

notebooks were actually published. Most pieces, well-known to the public, are collections of poems such

as The Waking, which he won a Pulitzer prize for in the mid 1950's. The Lost Son and Open House are

two other collections pieces of Roethke. A couple novels also helped this aspiring author and poet

achieve his status among literature; Words for the Wind and The Far Field. All of the works just

mentioned were not achieved by Roethke until he was well into his late 20's. As a child, he was hardly

one who would have been expected to become a major American poet.

Saginaw, Michigan, 1908, Otto and Helen Roethke welcomed their son Theodore into the world.

Theodore's future relationship with his parents would not be a considerable special one, especially with

his father. Otto, a floriculturalist and greenhouse owner would have his mood swings with his two sons.

Mood swings increased as Otto's consumption of alcohol increased. On the outside it seemed Theodore

could handle his father's awful drunken and a

imagery and a unifying structure to convey the relationship between a child and his father. These two

mind, the writer does the near impossible. He has conveyed the emotions of a very personal bond that

school and went onto University of Michigan and later to Harvard for graduate study. Harvard is where

Approximate Word count = 1045
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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