Dark Time

Theodore Roethke is one of Americas premier poets, ranking alongside Robert Frost, Walt Whit military man, and Carl Sandburg. His 1964 poem In A hidden era is both disturbing and challenging as a man veers on the edge of sanity through an outdoor experience. Roethke demonstrates through clear and form that he is a master poet, reflecting the deep inner understanding of self that end portray such emotions without being reduced to commonplace or juvenilia. The title of the poemIn A Dark sentenceis the first clue that all is not well in Roethkes universe.It is the primary indicator that the poem speaks to the troubled half of life. In many an(prenominal) ways one is reminded of Robert Frosts Acquainted With the Night, which conveys a deeper fiction of depression in its surface-simple account of insomnia. In A Dark Time speaks volumes about the poem that will follow. Roethke relies on a single simile in this poem, although it is replete with metaphor. In the last stanza, he sa ys his brain is care some heat-maddened summer fly buzzing on the windowsill.One can instanter picture the frantic action of such a fly, its nervous bouncing, sound and constant action. His soul, being like this, is perpetually agitated. But Roethke has established this meter reading through the metaphor of the dark woods a place where is soul has been caught out in the middle of the day, yet plunged in darkness. He is disoriented here, wondering whether something ahead is shelter (the cave) or further travail (merely a bend in the path). He regards himself dancing on the edge physically and metaphorically.In the first two stanzas, Roethke personifies his shadow, an image that well-nigh people perceive as a dark figure to begin with. Roethke expands the idea of his shadow to consist the darker nature of his self. He meets his shadow in the deepening shade, giving the lector a sense that he is meeting the darkest part of his inner self at a term when the depths of his depr ession have encompassed him. As with most people, Roethke relates a realistic happening as most people scarce reflect upon their lives in their darkest hours (In a dark time, the eye begins to see).In the last stanza, Roethke personifies his panic. (A fallen man, I climb out of my fear). As many know, fear is not a physical entity that can be ascended or descended. In this case, however, Roethkes fear (his dark time) has become such an overwhelming reality to him that, in order to come on from the depths of his struggle, Roethke sees this ascent as a physical act. Reading the line in full, the reader gets a sense that Roethke has actually fallen into an abyss cognize as fear.