The Shape of the Fire (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Theodore Roethke
- First Published: 1947
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Children, Nature, Childbirth, Life, biological
The Poem
In 1948 Theodore Roethke published The Lost Son and Other Poems, introducing the greenhouse and sequential poems that have come to define his unique style. “The Shape of the Fire” is the last poem in “The Lost Son” sequence. Roethke’s long poems are explorations of psychic states, and they progress cyclically rather than in a logical linear narrative. “The Shape of the Fire” begins by returning psychologically to the awakening of consciousness in the womb. The images follow the sensory world of a child, a primordial, animistic, natural world...
[The entire page is 1579 words long]
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