I Knew a Woman

I Knew a Woman
Theodore Roethke

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/122.html

This is a very loaded poem with some beautiful language and many deeper meanings. I love the first stanza as it describes the woman in all of her beauty and how amazing she is. At first I saw this as a woman the speaker adores and loves in a romantic way, but as I got to the second stanza, where there are references to teaching, especially things like standing and that she stroked his chin, I thought of the possibility that she is a motherly figure the speaker loves and looks up to. The last three stanzas of the poem have a great deal of metaphors and thought provoking ideas with deeper meanings in them. These are the most difficult to decipher exactly what is going on in the poem, but it all seems to attract the reader and really strikes me. The rhyme scheme is very set and gives a light flow as each line progresses to the next. It isn't a sing-song type of rhyme, but rather a connecting one. There is also an interesting use of parenthesis at the last line of every stanza. This seems to offset ad accent that final line. I find it interesting that if you read only the parenthesized lines, it all seems to be one flowing idea. Almost a mini poem that gives a feel of the original as a whole.