Roethke's "The Meadow Mouse" and the Problem of Sentimentality

Left, a juvenile heron (Black-crowned Night Heron??) catches a crab but isn't sure what to do next. Although it took awhile, the heron gets the crab down, one piece at a time. Was the crab young too? Who knows?

The Meadow Mouse by Theodore Roethke at Old Poetry

Though probably not as well known or esteemed as "The Waking" or “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke’s “The Meadow Mouse” seems to be a favorite among his readers, and I can see why. There’s no reason to argue against the poem's content as raw ideas—essentially, sympathy for the vulnerable, the wounded, the doomed.

Also, most of the individual images are effective in conveying a sensibility that might fit both children and adults, which is an accomplishment. The inverted, archaic syntax in “sleeps the mouse” (2) is charming, and it immediately sets up a tone that could inform either a children’s tale or adult literature. But sometimes in “The Meadow Mouse,” Roethke’s language and thinking (if there’s a difference) fall too far into a youthful level of understanding and way of talking about experience.

Presumptuous as it must seem, I’d have urged Roethke to think again in a few places, most of which amount to a tendency toward sentimentality—which is, remember, not just the emotional content in a work, but an excess of emotion, feelings that have not been earned by the poem’s presentation of an experience, feelings that exceed any known cause for them, or emotionality that has not been controlled and balanced by an intellectual presence in the poem.

This is a tightrope that every poet must walk; T.S. Eliot said the right balance between heart and mind could be called “Felt Thought.” I don’t mean that we should follow Eliot because he’s Eliot, but that particular concept is a keeper. (Of course, we should feel free to reverse the words to Thought Feeling).

Well. That’s something to chew on and respond to for now. TGIF: what’s a Friday for if not poetry analysis? I’ve gone windy on the poem, so here’s TGIF-2: I’ll wait a day or two before adding some examples and additional ideas, maybe lots of them.

The Meadow Mouse by Theodore Roethke at Old Poetry


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Faith Shearin's poem, "Retriever": Dogs, Poetry, Music, and Complexity

Fido Fetches Dollar Bills from the Orange Tip Bucket and Delivers Them to the Master.

Or, So Much for Dignity.

Or, "The Idea of Order at Key West"









Left: "The Master"




It's very hard to write a dog poem without going sappy, but I think Faith Shearin's "Retriever" succeeds. The speaker's relationship with her father adds some essential complication to the Old Shep theme. In fact, for another kind of complexity, I might hear some jealousy in the speaker as she considers the pooch a replacement for her, her siblings, and her mother. I'm not sure that her happiness is the only note I hear in the last line, and that's a nice ambiguity. On the other hand, the Retriever of the title is "retrieving" from the past the father she longed for, as well as a happier man.

(In stanza 7, line 2, "fan" should be "van." Note that that's two poems of the last three that have been marred by a typo--and this on rather prestigious sites. Next time I sound like an anal grammarian, remember this. It's a short step from typos to significant errors in meaning. The devil's in the details. Well, until the video-internet generation came along with its cognition bingo and "speed is god" mindset [anti-mind?]. Speed kills. If you love it, spell it. Do not set it free; it cannot fly, and it cannot read a map).

Retriever by Faith Shearin | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Can we say that an important difference between most music and most poetry is that music gets to be more sentimental? It gets to say "ain't" and "baby, baby" because the element of the music complicates the lyrics, no matter how simple or sentimental each may be alone. Composers like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and others challenge my point, but the fact remains that I can cite them as exceptions to the rule.

Speaking of music, simplicity, and sentimentality, especially if you're one of the millions who liked the movie I Walk the Line, look what I stumbled onto at good ol' YouTube (of course, I forget what I was looking for, and I never got to it). June Carter and Johnny Cash made a great team, but it seems right to remember that June was alive and kickin', long before Johnny came along. To its credit, the movie was fairly clear about that.

YouTube - june carter-grand ole opry

I'm not sure our current approach to country or other popular music is any more sophisticated than you see here, and it strikes me as less endearing, though that might say more about me than it does music or popular culture.

(I have absolutely no doubt that I have at least one typo or grammatical error here and in every post. I am not a prestigious site with paid, putatively educated editors).


YouTube - june carter-grand ole opry

Retriever by Faith Shearin | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

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