Straw for the Fire

by Wagoner, David

• ISBN13: 9781556592485
• ISBN10: 1556592485
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-01
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Pr

Summary

"There are only two passions in art; there are love and hate-with endless modifications."-Theodore Roethke At his death, Theodore Roethke left behind 277 spiral notebooks full of poetry fragments, aphorisms, jokes, memos, journal entries, random phrases, bits of dialogue, commentary, and fugitive miscellany. Within these notebooks, Roethke allowed his mind to rove freely, moment by moment, moving from the practical to the transcendental, from the halting to the sublime. Fellow poet and colleague David Wagoner distilled these notebooks-twelve linear feet of bookshelf-into an energetic, wise, and rollicking collection that shows Roethke to be one of the truly phenomenal creative sources in American poetry. From "A Psychic Janitor": I'm sick of fumbling, furtive, disorganized minds like bad lawyers trying to make too many points that this is an age of criticism: and these, mind you, tin-eared punks who couldn't tell a poem from an old boot if a gun were put to their heads . . . Cover art by United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(6)
Straw for the Fire (1953--62)	9	(8)
POETRY
In the Lap of a Dream (1948--49)	17	(7)
A Nest of Light (1948--49)	24	(4)
The Loveless Provinces (1948--49)	28	(5)
All the Semblance, All the Loss (1948--49)	33	(6)
The Stony Garden (1949--50)	39	(4)
The Wrath of Other Winds (1949--50)	43	(3)
In the Bush of Her Bones (1949--50)	46	(3)
The Dark Angel (1950--53)	49	(4)
Love Has Me Haunted (1950--53)	53	(4)
The Dance of the One-Legged Man (1951--53)	57	(5)
Father-Stem and Mother-Root (1951--53)	62	(4)
The Root of the Wind (1951--53)	66	(5)
Heart, You Have No House (1951--53)	71	(3)
The Middle of a Roaring World (1954--58)	74	(8)
I Sing Other Wonders (1954--58)	82	(4)
Recall This Heaven's Light (1954--58)	86	(5)
She Took My Eyes (1954--58)	91	(4)
The Plain Speech of a Crow (1954--62)	95	(4)
In the Large Mind of Love (1954--62)	99	(5)
The Things I Steal from Sleep (1954--62)	104	(5)
Between the Soul and Flesh (1957)	109	(1)
The Mire's My Home (1959--63)	110	(8)
The Desolation (1959--63)	118	(4)
My Flesh Learned to Die (1959--63)	122	(3)
And Time Slows Down (1960--63)	125	(3)
The Thin Cries of the Spirit (1959--63)	128	(4)
My Instant of Forever (1959--63)	132	(11)
PROSE
All My Lights Go Dark (1943--47)	143	(13)
The Cat in the Classroom (1943--47)	156	(6)
The Turn of the Wheel (1943--47)	162	(4)
The Poet's Business (1943--47)	166	(10)
Words for Young Writers (1948--49)	176	(10)
The Proverbs of Purgatory (1948--49)	186	(3)
I Teach Out of Love (1949--53)	189	(10)
First Class (1950--53)	199	(9)
The Right to Say Maybe (1948--53)	208	(12)
The Hammer's Knowledge (1954--58)	220	(3)
From Roethke to Goethe (1954--58)	223	(4)
The Teaching of Poetry (1954--58)	227	(4)
These Exasperations (1954--58)	231	(8)
A Psychic Janitor (1959--63)	239	(8)
The Beautiful Disorder (1954--63)	247	(12)
About the Author	259