Roethke and Dickinson

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“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 (line 2). This is the period in a lifetime of
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