There is a connection between the poetic styles of Theodore Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop. The two are influential poets notable for their styles of poetic presentations. Bishop professed a strong misogyny for the established feminist movement of her time. The connection that existed between her and Roethke revolved around the confessional style of poetry. this philosophy in poetry involved using a style of writing that avoided revealing any personal aspect of her life. While Roethke made many confessions, Bishop avoided this confession. In one of her works “In the Village,” she uses a third person observer, which is similar to that of Roethke.
One of the works of Roethke is My Papa’s Waltz. In the poem, he portrays an elderly man, the persona, thinking of his father when a young child. The relationship of the father and son is mutual and the father seems to want the boy to learn certain life traits. The man is actually presenting a horrible event in a more pleasant and memorable way. From the poem, it emerges that the son wishes to redo the certain actions of the father. From the fish, a poem by Bishop, the poet displays critical dispositions of her ecological awareness of the connectivity between humans and animals. The speaker, unlike Roethke’s persona is a mere observer narrating events of a particular day. In the process, the speaker displays a great level of awareness at the relevance between animals and human beings. Throughout the poem, the poet takes great care to distance herself from the storyline. This is quite unlike Roethke who indulges his personal memories into the story My Papa’s Waltz, thereby creating a connecting divide between him and Elizabeth Bishop.
Reference
Bishop, Elizabeth. Poems, Prose, and Letters. New York: Library of America, 2008. 733.
Theodore Roethke Michigan's Poet" by Linda Robinson Walker at Michigan Today (Summer 2001). http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/01/Sum01/mt1s01a.html Retrieved 2013-06-22
