In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

Here’s the poem this journal takes its title from: IN A DARK TIME In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the [...]

Six feet two inches tall, weighing well over 200 pounds, American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-63), was a man tormented, frantic for fame, succumbing to depression, suffering from alcoholism. He also became a college professor and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954. A teaching poet, Roethke began his life in Saginaw, Michigan, [...]

Anyone who has immersed himself in reading and discussing poetry as I have the last two years, must inevitably ask himself what he seeks from poetry, particularly when confronted by the diverse styles today that present themselves as “poetry.” Originally I told a friend that for me the best poetry had to have a “spiritual element” [...]