Kane Hall (Roethke Auditorium) Washington University
Theodore Roethke was a remarkable man, and famous poet, and a great teacher. The main auditorium of Kane Hall on the UW campus was named in Roethke's memory in 1970.
I am the edge of an important shadow.
-- Theodore Roethke
His passion for poetry and his rather eccentric behavior combined to make Roethke an inspiring teacher. Before coming to the UW, he served on the faculties of LaFayette College, Pennsylvania State College, and Bennington College, Vermont. He had received his bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was well loved and respected by both students and faculty.
Theodore H. Roethke applied at UW for a teaching job in 1947. The President of Bennington College wrote: "He is an extremely complex, temperamental and somewhat eccentric person… If the University of Washington can take his eccentric personality, it will acquire one of the best teachers I have ever seen."
A former student recounted that Roethke strode into a writing class one day and said, "Good writing always begins with close observation. Watch me closely and write down exactly what I do." Roethke jumped on top of his desk and danced an Irish jig for several minutes, then crawled out a third-story window and made faces at his students.
At Bennington College, Roethke's antics and his extended stays in the hospital eventually brought the scrutiny of legislators and administrators. The chairman of the English department at the time, Robert Heilman, came to Roethke's defense. Heilman successfully protected Roethke's position with what Alan Seager, author of The Glass House, desribed as "the finest support of a staff member I have ever heard of at the university department making anywhere.
Allan Seager, The Glass House: The Life of Theodore Roethke
In his letter of January 27, 1959, Heilman wrote: "he is, I think, one of the most valuable of all faculty members. Surely few people have a reputation comparable to his in twentieth century American literature....I think he will be a permanent figure in American literature, and whatever place he has, this university would be glad to have...I believe he has done more to make us known favorably as a university than any other single person on the staff. He is known nationally and internationally, and whatever his is known, we are known."
Penn State: "Students testified Theodore Roethke was an extraordinary teacher. At the time he was relatively unknown as a poet. That spring he published his second book, The Lost Son. His contempraries took notice. During the following decade he won the Shelly Memorial Award, The National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Roethke's bipolar difficulties were well known on campus. However, Roethke never put his students in dnager, nor did they feel afraid of him. The teaching of poetry made him mopre orderly and intensified his gifts as an instructor and critic. His powers of persuasion were mesmerizing. Though he never became an editor himself, he had to a high degree, one of the most neccessary qualities of a successful one: he was genuinely glad, even joyful, when one of his students wrote a good poem, and he showed no trace of jealousy or rivalry."
David Wagoner (former student and colleage of Theodore)
"To speak first of Roethke's career as a teacher -- he was a great, devoted, and inspired one in the classroom. When he left his first job at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennslyvannia, his students petitioned that he stay on."
Peter Nuemeyer, Theodore Roethke, The Teacher
Theodore Roethke's poem, Elegy for Jane, is an emotional response to the death of one of his pupils. The girl, Jane, was thrown by a horse, resulting in her death.
Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)
I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickeral smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her, And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind, Her song trembling the twigs and small branches. The shade sang with her; The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing, And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.
Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water. My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.
If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.
Theodore Roethke
