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     In contemplating the anti-intellectual harshness of
Roethkes The Waking, I thought about the plainness of
Romanesque churches, thought about them as examples of edle
Einfalt, stille Groesse.  wondered if this interpretation
would make Roethke more accessible.  Unadorned, undecorated,
unarticulated: pure structure; pure language without color,
without pictures.  For Roethke the villanelle is the vehicle
of anti-intellectualism.  It is as if mind, nous, arithmetic
order had precipitated and concentrated itself in the
structure of the poem.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
