A Poem Stands to Shine a Light in the Shadows of Any Era.

This is a classic, a poem I always return to and love to share.

One of the marks of a great poem is it speaks in ways that makes us each feel as though the poem was meant only for me, or you. Its truth stands beyond the confines of time or limits of a generation.

Some say a poem is always open for interpretation. There is truth to that. What I glean and what you experience are different, but a poem must have, at the core, an essence that goes even beyond you or me; it must stand in the light and shadow of what we know as humanity and lift us above even our own hearts.

What is the writer’s intention? Who knows and honestly, I have to say, who cares? I write and more often than not I don’t know what my conscious intention is and I cannot always paraphrase poetry into prose to lend it meaning because that is why it is a poem.

So this poem is one of my all-time favorites. Like many of his era, he suffered with alcoholism and manic depression without the insight we have today with how drugs [yes, drugs] can help.

He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for his book, The Waking. Enjoy.

The Waking

By Theodore Roethke