And when he appears upon a TV screen,
We're afraid of what our eyes have seen.
The highly-regarded American poet, Theodore Roethke, grew up surrounded by natural beauty subject to German discipline in a giant greenhouse. The perfect conditions in which a sensitive young boy's Romanticism might flourish ...
However, as Camille Paglia points out, there was always something queer about Roethke's lyricism; his "portraits of nature are often eerie or unsettling", particularly when he attempted to connect the world of the greenhouse to his own (often profoundly disturbed) inner experience.
Perhaps this explains why the last lines of his poem 'The Bat' have been haunting me for days:
However, as Camille Paglia points out, there was always something queer about Roethke's lyricism; his "portraits of nature are often eerie or unsettling", particularly when he attempted to connect the world of the greenhouse to his own (often profoundly disturbed) inner experience.
Perhaps this explains why the last lines of his poem 'The Bat' have been haunting me for days:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face. Either that, or they caused me to reflect once more upon the terrifying case of the Bat Boy, discovered living in Hellhole Cave, West Virginia, by Dr Ron Dillon, as reported in the pages of the Weekly World News back in the summer of 1992, and now established as an iconic figure within the popular imagination ...
See:
Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn (Vintage Books, 2006), p. 146.
Theodore Roethke, The Collected Poems, (Faber and Faber, 1968).
To read 'The Bat', please visit the Poetry and Literature page of the US Library of Congress: click here.
Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn (Vintage Books, 2006), p. 146.
Theodore Roethke, The Collected Poems, (Faber and Faber, 1968).
To read 'The Bat', please visit the Poetry and Literature page of the US Library of Congress: click here.
