I Knew a Woman

by Theodore Roethke
page 45-46

I chose to blog this poem because I saw some parallels to the "Dream Song" poem that my group presented in class. After reading this poem, you get a sense about this man in love, who has nothing but praise and kind words about the woman in the poem. The way in which he describes her is very far from cliche, and although his descriptions may be a little unclear at first, everything in the poem comes together to give this very soft, delicate feeling towards the woman. Words and phrases such as "undulant white skin" and "dazzled at her flowing knees" make the woman very feminine, almost fragile in a sense. Roethke says that "when small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them". Comparing this woman to a small bird puts her above any other woman; like a small bird, she is a very sweet, pretty thing to look at. Also like a small bird, if you get too close to fast, you will scare her away, so the author acts towards her with the utmost gentleness. The line "of her choice virtues only gods could speak" further separate her from any other woman, almost like she is from somewhere higher than this world. Although the rhyme varies throughout the poem, the general scheme for each stanza is ABABCCC, with changes here in there in a couple lines. The way the rhyme scheme separates each stanza makes the reader pay more attention to each stanza on its own, making it obvious where one idea ends and the next begins, not because of the end of the stanza but of the final rhyme.