My Papa's Waltz : Author

The son of German immigrants, Roethke was born on May 25, 1908, in Saginaw, Michigan. When he was a child his parents owned a large floral and produce business, and the young Roethke spent much time in the greenhouses among the plants, an environment which would greatly influence his early work. At the age of five Roethke entered the John Moore School, and in 1921 he moved on to Arthur Hill High School. Already Roethke had ambitions of becoming a writer, but a writer of prose, not poetry. When Roethke was in his second year of high school, his father died of cancer, forcing Roethke, the eldest child, to become head of the household.

Roethke graduated from high school in 1925 and wanted to apply to Harvard, but his mother persuaded him to stay closer to the family and attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In college Roethke concentrated on literature and language, and began to train himself to become a writer. Upon graduation he entered the University of Michigan school of law, but quickly realized that it was a mistake and withdrew after attending only one class. In the fall of 1930 Roethke headed east to further his education at Harvard Graduate School; however, the Great Depression interrupted his education, forcing him to withdraw from school and find a job before he could earn his doctorate. Roethke began teaching at Lafayette University and later Michigan State College, where students found him to be a superb teacher. Unfortunately, in November of 1935 Roethke suffered a mental breakdown, the first of a number of recurring spells of mental illness which he would endure throughout his life. Upon recovering he accepted a job at Pennsylvania State University and published his first book of verse, Open House (1941). Moving on to Bennington College in Vermont, Roethke continued to produce poetry and became well known in the literary community. Roethke accepted a teaching position at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1947, and around this time he began to receive recognition for his work, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for his collection The Waking, Poems: 1933-1953. Roethke married Beatrice O’Connell on January 3, 1953 and remained in Seattle the rest of his life, leaving occasionally to study, tour, and teach in Europe. On the first of August, 1963 Roethke suffered a coronary occlusion and died a short time later; he was buried in Oak-wood Cemetery in Saginaw next to his mother and father.