Theodore Roethke

He died on August 1, 1963 after suffering from a heart attack in his friend S. Rasnics’ swimming pool, on Bainbridge Island, Washington. He was 55 years old at the time.

Theodore Roethke was born on May 25, 1908 in Michigan to Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner. His father was a market-gardener who owned a large greenhouse. Roethke grew up around the Saginaw River and spent most of his time in the greenhouse.

He attended the Aurthur Hill High School. In1923, at the age of 14, his close uncle’s suicide and father’s death because of cancer shook his life. This event is said to have shaped Roethke’s lifelong psyche and creativity.

In 1925, Roethke got enrolled in the University of Michigan. His family wanted him to have a legal career but he quit law school only after the first semester. He later attended Harvard University to study under a poet.

Because of the great financial and social impact of the Great Depression, Roethke had to leave Harvard and teach at Lafayette College from 1931 to 1935. It was here that he started working on his first book, ‘Open House’.

By the end of 1935, he started teaching at Michigan State College but could not live up to the pressures of it and suffered from an episode of mental breakdown. It gave him time to explore his writing caliber.

Roethke started teaching at the Pennsylvania State University in 1936, where his reputation as a poet was established. He taught in this university for seven years and side by side, got published in prominent publications like, ‘Poetry’, ‘Saturday Review’, ‘etc.

In 1941, his first book, ‘Open House’, was published and got rave reviews in publications like, ‘New Yorker’, ‘Kenyon Review’, ‘Atlantic’, etc. His work showed influences from writers like, Emily Dickinson, Louise Bogan, Stanley Kuntiz, etc.

Roethke was asked by Harvard to deliver on their esteemed Morris Gray lectures in 1942. In 1943, started teaching at the Bennington College and it was here that he started writing, ‘The Lost Son and Other Poems’.

‘Words For The Winds’, a collection of forty-three poems published in 1958, is considered to be Roethke’s most prominent work, and he won many prestigious awards for it.