In a Dark Time (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Theodore Roethke
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Despair, Mental illness, Depression, mental, Loneliness, Life, biological, Animals
Several of the elements of Roethke's mind, personality, and poetic skill combine to assert themselves in “In a Dark Time,” one of his most personal and most powerful works. The poem begins with a violent description of a psychic breakdown, a comment on Roethke's own mental illness, and ends by invoking the vocabulary of religious mysticism. Underlying the whole poem is the startling assumption that such a collapse may be necessary in order for a person to reach truth and achieve integration of the personality and unity with the rest of nature. Roethke certainly thought this theory...
[The entire page is 899 words long]
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