May 24, 2022 • SPEAKER SERIES • David Wojahn – Homegrown Cosmologies: Animism and Elegy in Roethke’s “Where Knock Is Open Wide”
7:00 PM EST
This month's Speaker Series topic, “The Power of Language,” features contributors to the critical anthology A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, edited by William Barillas and published by Ohio University Press in 2021. Each week, William will introduce one or more contributors who will speak about the Roethke poems they address in their anthology contributions.
This week, David Wojahn discusses the arc of Roethke’s “Where Knock Is Open Wide,” a piece that invokes regression as its primary tool for the poet’s attempt at spiritual rebirth. The poem exquisitely embodies a formal inventiveness and sense of spiritual yearning that derives from grand and abiding obsessions and not from mere compulsion and self-imitation.
About the speakers:
David Wojahn is the author most recently of From the Valley of Making: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (2015) and For the Scribe (2017), a collection of poetry. His essay “‘All the Blessings of This Consuming Chance’: Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, and the Middle-Generation Poets” appeared in The Cambridge History of American Poetry (2015), edited by Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt. He teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
William Barillas is an independent writer, editor, and former academic who has taught in Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. He is the author of The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland and the editor of A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, both from Ohio University Press, as well as many scholarly essays, poems, and works of creative nonfiction.
Thanks to generous support from the Ohio Arts Council, Arts Midwest, and the National Endowment for the Arts, our Speaker Series is free through May 31, 2022.
————
To register for the event:
Select a registration option and click “Add to Cart”
Click on your cart in the top right corner and complete checkout process.
Once registered, you will receive two emails: a confirmation email and an email containing the Zoom link for the event. If you do not receive these emails, contact us at info@friendsofroethke.org.
All Speaker Series events take place via Zoom on Tuesdays at 7:00pm EST.
7:00 PM EST
This month's Speaker Series topic, “The Power of Language,” features contributors to the critical anthology A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, edited by William Barillas and published by Ohio University Press in 2021. Each week, William will introduce one or more contributors who will speak about the Roethke poems they address in their anthology contributions.
This week, David Wojahn discusses the arc of Roethke’s “Where Knock Is Open Wide,” a piece that invokes regression as its primary tool for the poet’s attempt at spiritual rebirth. The poem exquisitely embodies a formal inventiveness and sense of spiritual yearning that derives from grand and abiding obsessions and not from mere compulsion and self-imitation.
About the speakers:
David Wojahn is the author most recently of From the Valley of Making: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (2015) and For the Scribe (2017), a collection of poetry. His essay “‘All the Blessings of This Consuming Chance’: Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, and the Middle-Generation Poets” appeared in The Cambridge History of American Poetry (2015), edited by Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt. He teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
William Barillas is an independent writer, editor, and former academic who has taught in Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. He is the author of The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland and the editor of A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, both from Ohio University Press, as well as many scholarly essays, poems, and works of creative nonfiction.
Thanks to generous support from the Ohio Arts Council, Arts Midwest, and the National Endowment for the Arts, our Speaker Series is free through May 31, 2022.
————
To register for the event:
Select a registration option and click “Add to Cart”
Click on your cart in the top right corner and complete checkout process.
Once registered, you will receive two emails: a confirmation email and an email containing the Zoom link for the event. If you do not receive these emails, contact us at info@friendsofroethke.org.
All Speaker Series events take place via Zoom on Tuesdays at 7:00pm EST.
7:00 PM EST
This month's Speaker Series topic, “The Power of Language,” features contributors to the critical anthology A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, edited by William Barillas and published by Ohio University Press in 2021. Each week, William will introduce one or more contributors who will speak about the Roethke poems they address in their anthology contributions.
This week, David Wojahn discusses the arc of Roethke’s “Where Knock Is Open Wide,” a piece that invokes regression as its primary tool for the poet’s attempt at spiritual rebirth. The poem exquisitely embodies a formal inventiveness and sense of spiritual yearning that derives from grand and abiding obsessions and not from mere compulsion and self-imitation.
About the speakers:
David Wojahn is the author most recently of From the Valley of Making: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (2015) and For the Scribe (2017), a collection of poetry. His essay “‘All the Blessings of This Consuming Chance’: Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, and the Middle-Generation Poets” appeared in The Cambridge History of American Poetry (2015), edited by Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt. He teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
William Barillas is an independent writer, editor, and former academic who has taught in Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. He is the author of The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland and the editor of A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, both from Ohio University Press, as well as many scholarly essays, poems, and works of creative nonfiction.
Thanks to generous support from the Ohio Arts Council, Arts Midwest, and the National Endowment for the Arts, our Speaker Series is free through May 31, 2022.
————
To register for the event:
Select a registration option and click “Add to Cart”
Click on your cart in the top right corner and complete checkout process.
Once registered, you will receive two emails: a confirmation email and an email containing the Zoom link for the event. If you do not receive these emails, contact us at info@friendsofroethke.org.
All Speaker Series events take place via Zoom on Tuesdays at 7:00pm EST.
