In a Dark Time

Roethke, Theodore

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Aull, Felice
  • Date of entry: Jan-30-1997
  • Last revised: Jan-20-2010

Summary

This beautiful poem appears in a section called "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical." It is a penetrating rendering, at one and the same time, of "pure despair" and of transcendence; of the curse and simultaneous exaltation of heightened awareness; of the personal experience of "madness," "my shadow pinned against a sweating wall," "the edge is what I have," and of a more profound soul-searching that contemplates union with nature and with God: "I climb out of my fear / The mind enters itself, and God the mind, / And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

Commentary

Roethke, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, suffered from manic depressive illness. This poem is remarkable in conveying a life experienced between extremes and at the edge; we might even recognize elements here that surface from time to time in ourselves. But the poet probes beyond mere personal anguish and that is, perhaps, how he survives.

Miscellaneous

First published: 1964

Primary Source

The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

Publisher

Doubleday

Place Published

New York

Edition

1966