No charge for the program. Advance registration required. Register online in order to receive the Zoom session invitation link and readings packet. Please email Michael Bellacosa at mbellacosa@wiltonlibrary.org with any questions.

In his relatively short life, Theodore Roethke, a deeply troubled man, wrote poems to help himself cope with his bi-polar condition and to help other poets pursue their “inner selves.” He was a beloved professor of poetry at the University of Michigan, his alma mater. Some of his students, Richard Hugo and James Wright, became established poets.

He was born in 1908 and died in 1963. His father owned a 25-acre greenhouse. Roethke worked with his father in the greenhouse; and as a result, nature become his source of metaphor and guardian in trying to heal himself through his writing. His father was a disciplinarian whose attitude affected Roethke negatively. When Roethke was fourteen, his father died of cancer. The boy blamed himself for his father’s death because of their difficult relationship. However, Roethke learned to “go by feeling where he has to go” as he wrote in “The Waking.”  His book of poetry The Waking won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

We will accompany him on his journey.

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, “Borrowed Scenery,” Yuganta Press, and “Through the Trees of Autumn,” Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild. Several of her poems have been published in Amethyst Review.