The
Poetry of Theodore Roethke
by
Brian Anthony McNutt
It wasn't one experience, but a thousand that I remember, when
poems, bright like fireflies buzzing around my head, comforted
and inspired me, or vexed me until I threw them across the room
like a madman.
"What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?" Theodore
Roethke wrote that. It's the only line of poetry I've ever been
able to memorize. I memorized it the first night I stayed at
Fort Lewis, Washington. It was January 2002. The 101st Airborne
Division was replacing the Marines in Kandahar, Afghanistan,
and soon, my Army Reserve unit would be their Forward Surgical
Team. I had no concept of what that meant, or what would be required
of me. I was lying on a filthy mattress, trying not to think
about it, trying not to think about my wife, waving goodbye to
me as the bus rode away at four that morning. I pulled the coarse
wool blanket over me and under a dim lamp started reading The
Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.
Soon my unit was in Afghanistan and for the next six months
I spent my free time sitting on my cot in my sleep tent, reading
or writing letters. The small corner I occupied was walled off
by blankets hung on a string. I read by flashlight. I read many
things, but when I needed comfort, when I needed beauty, I read
Roethke. There wasn't much beauty in Kandahar. There was war.
There was longing. There was heat and sand and bickering. But
there was always Roethke, helping me get through one day at a
time.
Roethke writes about flowers. He writes about the wind. Sitting
on my cot, covered in sand, trying not think about burnt bodies
or shrapnelled kids, I'd relish his father's greenhouse with
its lilacs and roses; he would always provide an image to comfort
me. Often, I would scour the book looking for passages that reminded
me of my wife. When I found a particularly dazzling one, it was
like she was with me. I felt close to her.
Sometimes I would read passages out loud. You can imagine the
impression it made on my Army buddies, my reading poetry aloud
to them, especially poetry about flowers, as Roethke wrote. But
I didn't care. I'd laugh it off and insist that they liked it.
I remember I really got going once. This was in early July, when
it was 130 degrees inside the tent. I lay on my cot in a pool
of sweat. I needed distraction badly. Not only was the heat stifling,
but we had just found out we were not going home that month;
we didn't know when we would be. So I was looking for a passage
that reminded me of her. This is what I found:
But this rose, this rose in the sea-wind, Stays, Stays
in its true place, Flowering out of the dark, Widening at high
noon, face upward, A single wild rose, struggling out of the
white embrace of the morning-glory
I read it aloud once, then I read it aloud again. It was her, my
wife, her presence floating to me on the sea-wind, her beautiful
face flowering out of the darkness. I read it aloud again, passionately,
like a politician trying to make a point in a debate. She's that
single wild rose. It was like those words switched a piece of her
on inside me, the piece that burns brightest when we are touching,
when the rest of the world becomes an inconsequential blur. She
lived in me. I felt her. She was the rose flowering out of the
darkness, and the darkness was all around me. Drenched in sweat,
as hot as I had ever been in my life, I was content. I shut the
book and went outside into the bright day. I felt good, and I had
that wonderful image to thank for it.
Then, finally, after 220 days, we returned home. Today, I still
read poetry, lounging confortably in front of a cozy fire in
my living room. In addition to Roethke, I read Frost, Lowell,
Berryman and others. They all inspire me. They all move me in
their own ways. But I will always remember reading the words
of Roethke, sitting on my cot in the suffocating heat of Afghanistan,
trying to imagine a better place, and always finding it.
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