Celebrate the Centennial of Poet Theodore Roethke's Birth November 5, 2008

Roethke was a legendary teacher at the University of Washington, where he mentored a generation of Northwest poets, including David Wagoner, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Hugo. Many of Roethke's poems evoke the plant and insect life he knew intimately growing up in Michigan around the greenhouses of his family's floral business. Troubled throughout adulthood by mental instability and alcoholism, he often dwells on his psyche's vulnerability but also shows a deft comic touch in treating familial and erotic relationships. He died in 1963. His posthumous collection of poems, 'The Far Field' won the 1964 National Book Award.