A constellation of essays that reanimates the work of this pivotal twentieth-century American poet for a new century. 

 

This volume is the first to reconsider Roethke’s work in terms of the expanded critical approaches to literature that have emerged since his death in 1963. Editor William Barillas and over forty contributors, including highly respected literary scholars, critics, and writers such as Peter Balakian, Camille Paglia, Jay Parini, and David Wojahn, collectively make a case for Roethke’s poetry as a complete, unified, and evolving body of work. The accessible essays employ a number of approaches, including formalism, ecocriticism, reader-response, and feminist critique to explicate the poetics, themes, and the biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Roethke’s work.

 

A constellation of essays that reanimates the work of this pivotal twentieth-century American poet for a new century.

This volume is the first to reconsider Roethke’s work in terms of the expanded critical approaches to literature that have emerged since his death in 1963. Editor William Barillas and over forty contributors, including highly respected literary scholars, critics, and writers such as Peter Balakian, Camille Paglia, Jay Parini, and David Wojahn, collectively make a case for Roethke’s poetry as a complete, unified, and evolving body of work. The accessible essays employ a number of approaches, including formalism, ecocriticism, reader-response, and feminist critique to explicate the poetics, themes, and the biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Roethke’s work.

Contributors

Borja Aguiló Obrador
Peter Balakian
William Barillas
Don Bogen
Neal Bowers
Nicholas Bradley
Luke Brekke
Russell Brickey
Katharine Bubel
Norman Chaney
Jeffrey Clapp
Lyn Coffin
Kristin M. Distel
Carrie Duke
Laura Duncan
Laura Gill
Patrick Gill
Christopher Giroux
William Heyen
Trenton Hickman
Michael Hinds
Edward Hirsch
Brooke Horvath
Marcel Inhoff
Walter Kalaidjian
Frank J. Kearful
Andrew David King
Marc Malandra
John J. McKenna
Aaron M. Moe
Sarah Kathryn Moore
Edward Morin
Marcia Noe
Camille Paglia
Jay Parini
Rod Phillips
Ronald Primeau
Adam Putz
Bernard Quetchenbach
David Radavich
John Rohrkemper
Brandon Rushton
Joseph T. Thomas Jr.
Jeff Vande Zande
David Wojahn

William Barillas is the author of The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland, also from Ohio University Press, as well as many essays in scholarly and literary journals. His areas of focus include American literature, particularly literature of the Midwest, with special concern for poetry, environmental literature, and Latinx literature.