Dark Time

Theodore Roethke is one of the Statess premier poets, ranking on board Robert freeze, Walt Whitman, and Carl Sandburg. His 1964 poem In A darkened Time is both disturbing and intriguing as a man veers on the edge of sanity through an open-air(prenominal) experience. Roethke demonstrates through subject and form that he is a master poet, reflecting the deep informal sense of self that can depict much(prenominal) emotions without being reduced to platitude or juvenilia. The title of the poemIn A Dark Timeis the jump clue that all is not head in Roethkes universe.It is the primary forefinger that the poem speaks to the troubled half of life. In numerous ways one is reminded of Robert Frosts Acquainted With the Night, which conveys a deeper parable of depression in its surface-simple account of insomnia. In A Dark Time speaks volumes some the poem that will follow. Roethke relies on a single simile in this poem, although it is occupy with metaphor. In the at long last st anza, he says his consciousness is like some heat-maddened summer fly ball buzzing on the windowsill.One can right off picture the frantic action of such a fly, its nervous bouncing, ticking and perpetual action. His soul, being like this, is perpetually agitated. save Roethke has established this interpretation through the metaphor of the dark woods a aspire where is soul has been caught out in the centre of the day, yet plunged in darkness. He is lost here, wondering whether something ahead is shelter (the cave) or further travail (merely a winding in the path). He sees himself dancing on the edge corporally and metaphorically.In the first two stanzas, Roethke personifies his shadow, an image that most people get the picture as a dark effigy to begin with. Roethke expands the idea of his shadow to curb the darker nature of his self. He meets his shadow in the deepening shade, giving the reader a sense that he is meeting the darkest cave in of his inner self at a ter m when the depths of his depression have encompassed him. As with most people, Roethke relates a realistic mishap as most people single reflect upon their lives in their darkest hours (In a dark time, the eye begins to see).In the last stanza, Roethke personifies his fear. (A fallen man, I heave 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 world to him that, in order to emerge from the depths of his struggle, Roethke sees this ascent as a physical act. indicant the line in full, the reader gets a sense that Roethke has actually fallen into an abysm known as fear.