May 17, 2022 • SPEAKER SERIES • John Rohrkemper – Excavating Roethke’s “Root Cellar”
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, John Rohrkemper will talk with us about his essay, “Excavating Roethke’s ‘Root Cellar’.” The root cellar in Roethke’s poem is an unromantic place of small, unlovely things. While all of the greenhouse poems are about becoming, in all its uncertainty and glory, “Root Cellar” describes the first inchoate stirrings of life in the greenhouse world.
About John Rohrkemper:
John Rohrkemper is Distinguished Professor of English at Elizabethtown College and was formerly the Director of Creative Writing at the college. Besides his scholarly writing on American literature and culture, he has written more than thirty works for the theater, including short and full-length plays and an opera libretto. Additionally, he has worked as an actor, director, composer, musical director and dramaturg. In response to the plague years and the shuttering of the theaters, he has recently turned his attention to writing fiction.
About William Barillas:
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.
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, John Rohrkemper will talk with us about his essay, “Excavating Roethke’s ‘Root Cellar’.” The root cellar in Roethke’s poem is an unromantic place of small, unlovely things. While all of the greenhouse poems are about becoming, in all its uncertainty and glory, “Root Cellar” describes the first inchoate stirrings of life in the greenhouse world.
About John Rohrkemper:
John Rohrkemper is Distinguished Professor of English at Elizabethtown College and was formerly the Director of Creative Writing at the college. Besides his scholarly writing on American literature and culture, he has written more than thirty works for the theater, including short and full-length plays and an opera libretto. Additionally, he has worked as an actor, director, composer, musical director and dramaturg. In response to the plague years and the shuttering of the theaters, he has recently turned his attention to writing fiction.
About William Barillas:
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.
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, John Rohrkemper will talk with us about his essay, “Excavating Roethke’s ‘Root Cellar’.” The root cellar in Roethke’s poem is an unromantic place of small, unlovely things. While all of the greenhouse poems are about becoming, in all its uncertainty and glory, “Root Cellar” describes the first inchoate stirrings of life in the greenhouse world.
About John Rohrkemper:
John Rohrkemper is Distinguished Professor of English at Elizabethtown College and was formerly the Director of Creative Writing at the college. Besides his scholarly writing on American literature and culture, he has written more than thirty works for the theater, including short and full-length plays and an opera libretto. Additionally, he has worked as an actor, director, composer, musical director and dramaturg. In response to the plague years and the shuttering of the theaters, he has recently turned his attention to writing fiction.
About William Barillas:
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.
