Roethke, Theodore : In a Dark Time

Literature Annotations

	On-Line Text
Genre	Poem
Keywords	Chronic Illness/Chronic Disease, Depression, Disease and Health, Mental Illness, Nature, Religion, Suffering
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.
Source	The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Publisher	Doubleday
Edition	1966
Place Published	New York
Miscellaneous	First published: 1964
Annotated by	Aull, Felice
Date of Entry	12/19/94
Last Revised	01/20/10