Roethke and Dickinson
“Open House” by Theodore Roethke is a poem about the poetic
process of self-discovery. A theme common in the Romantic tradition. The title
resonates with meaning. Reading it brings a person to “Open House” on a
similar search, seeking to learn from the poet by following his lead in a spiritual
quest.” Open house” is clever by the poem’s forthright tone and its concluding
dark discovery. In the poem, Roethke establishes the connection between his
self and the self’s labor of love. Although his art is natural, it is so difficult that
it is painful. His secrets do not speak; they “cry aloud” (line 1) Saying that his
“truths are all fore-known,” (line 7) Roethke acknowledges a personal
clairvoyance, as though he has meditated on the self-many times.
“This anguish self-revealed,” (line 8) the journey through his own
house, the anguish self, has taken him inward to a place of universal mystery, a
deep room of creativity. Roethke only approaches rage at the end of the poem,
as if pure creativity is like fire life-enhancing or all consuming. How pain
overwhelms an individual to the point of agony. “Rage wraps my clearest cry,”
“To witless agony” (lines 17-18). “The image that never left me was of a blond,
smooth, shambling giant, irrevocably Teutonic, whose even-featured
countenance seemed ready to be touched by time, waiting to be transfigured,
with a few subtle lines, into a tragic mask.” Written by Stanley Kunitz in a
tribute to Theodore Roethke.
What Dickinson says in “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”
(line 1) explains how after a time of great pain or sorrow, an individual
experiences a type of numbness. This numbness is like the silence of a formal
event, maybe an event such as a funeral as suggested by the mention of
"Tombs" in...