Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan on May 25, 1908. When he was 14 he suffered the double tragedy of his father dying of cancer and the uncle to whom he was close committing suicide. He also suffered bouts of depression, what we would now describe as bipolar disorder. These factors came to define the man and his work.

Roethke studied English at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1929. He began to write poems while studying. Always feeling apart from other people, that he didn’t fit in, he moved from Michigan to Harvard and back again. However, his disenchantment with his studies, and the beginning of the Great Depression, led him to drop out.

Deciding that he wanted to teach, Roethke completed a master’s degree in English from the University of Michigan. But the stress and exhaustion of his mental condition led to a mental breakdown in 1935, the first of several that eventually landed the poet in Psychiatric Hospital. During this period, Roethke worked on his first collection of poems, though it wasn’t published until 1941, under the title of “Open House”. It met with critical acclaim.

Roethke began teaching poetry at Michigan State University, where he became a popular professor. Despite his standing with his students, Roethke found that he was neglecting his own creative needs, leading to further depression and a second breakdown in 1945.

The two collections following “Open House”, “The Lost Son and Other Poems” (1948) and “Praise to the End!” (1951), were followed by the collection “The Waking”, which earned Roethke the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

His last work “The Far Field” (1964) was published a year after Roethke’s death on August 1, 1963, from a heart attack while swimming in a friend’s pool. It won the National Book Award in 1965.