The Storm by Theodore Roethke

1

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain.2

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

A time to go home!--
And a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
A cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
Where the heavy door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy,--
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.3

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
Flattening the limber carnations.

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
The bulb goes on and off, weakly.
Water roars into the cistern.

We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
Breathing heavily, hoping--
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.



Analysis of “The Storm” by Jessica Meiki


Theodore Roethke's masterpiece “The Storm” is a graphically descriptive poem which portrays to the reader an aggressive storm and its influence on nature, a town, and the people experiencing its wrath. Throughout the poem, Roethke emphasizes on the physical aspects of the wind and water themselves, such as how they look and sound. Nature seems to have been thrown into chaos by this storm, and so clearly depicts the storm's chaotic and noisy aura. Roethke seems to push a feeling of pity onto the reader for the little town and its frightened residents, who are being assailed by the tempest.

Although Roethke did not use a simple visual form for this poem, he had a reason for doing so. It has large stanzas, small stanzas, long lines, and short lines. He used obscure punctuation to accent the poem's messiness, such as creating stanza-long sentences with multiple commas, and adding random dashes here and there to muddle the readers thoughts and exhaust them! To understand the full meaning of this work, one must take in all of it at once, even the way it looks. One cannot focus on one aspect of the poem for being beaten in by everything else, just like a storm.

Just like its form, the poem's sound is a significant medium used by Roethke to create his poem's restless mood. There is no obvious rhyme scheme from line to line; even the faintest pattern cannot be found. Because lines are hardly ever the same length, the rhythm is lazy at times, then at others it is rapid. Occasional alliterations such as “small street-lamp swinging and slamming,” “card players closer to their cards,” and “steady sloshing of the swell” are a few of the only obvious rhyme schemes. There is a couplet found on lines 13 and 16, which reads “fine fume..flicking foam.” Again, all of this reflects the storms crazy mood to the reader .

The senses that mainly appeal to the reader are sight, feel, and hearing. Roethke creates a vivid picture for the reader, one of the many examples being “a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley.” To the reader, much of the feelings are felt through the elements of nature in the poem, such as “the black rain runs over us.” Roethke also portrays how shabby the town is through feeling “We creep to our bed with its straw mattresses” and “We lie closer on the gritty pillow.” All the sounds in the poem are created by nature “steady sloshing of the swell” and “crack of thunder.”

Roethke included a few interesting examples of figurative language in his piece. Quite like the majority of all the highlights in this poem, they are oriented around nature. In a simile, rain is compared to buckshot “a fine fume of rain driving in from the sea, riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot.” Personification is seen in the following example “shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard.” Here simple fruit are referred to as being wise, like an elderly man.

In conclusion, we can say that Roethke has not used a straightforward pattern or structure to compose and describe his storm. He combined different lengths of stanzas and lines, random punctuation, obscure comparisons, and odd adjectives to give his poem its boisterous atmosphere. Because the work has no patterned rhyme or rhythm structure, one cannot fall into a sense of comfort, just as if they were really in a storm. Although it seems this poem is a confused mess with no skeleton, it really does have a purpose for being so disorienting; so that you can find no true sense of direction, and so be lost in the whirling winds of the hurricane.

-Jess