Elegy for Jane (Theodore Roethke)

I like poems, like this one, where they seem to be a page taken from the poet's journal. It doesn't seemed planned. Rather, it is like an outpouring of emotion made into sentences that just somehow flow together and happen to form a touchstone for everyone's thoughts and emotions. There is true talent in making the personal so universal.

Here, we have N who is a teacher of some kind writing an elegy for a student who has been killed after being thrown by a horse. It's so specific, yet it works for universality because as it says at the end "I, with no rights in this matter,/Neither father nor lover." Isn't that kind of the way it always is? I mean, I read in the paper today about a horrific crime where some lady tortured and killed a disabled man because she believed he had snitched years before. I don't know the lady. I don't know the man. Yet, the crime shook me up. It got into my bones. If I had thought of it, I would have, perhaps, written a poem much like this one in response to that man's senseless death.

I have to wonder if N really did have feelings for Jane. He says he's not her lover, but, perhaps, he means that literally and he really did have inappropriate feelings of love towards his student. Then this poem must have been the only release his poor heart had after her death. The emotion is so high is this poem.

Favorite line: "I speak the words of my love:/I, with no rights in this matter,/Neither father nor lover."