Cuttings/Cuttings (later) (1948). Content and Description

This pair of poems is also from The Lost Son and Other Poems. They are the opening poems of the volume and are good examples of both the sharp attention Roethke paid to the details of the natural world and the way he reflects upon how that natural world impacts the viewer. The first poem, “Cuttings,” is a fairly straightforward description of floral cuttings, in a vase or some type of container, drooping over the “sugary loam” of earth (l. 1).

Note the speaker’s fascination with the plant’s workings, as if the poem is a kind of affirmation of life even though the cuttings “droop” and “stem- fur dries” (ll. 1, 2). Despite these signs of decay, the speaker notes that “the delicate slips keep coaxing up water” (l. 3) and that “the small cells bulge” (l. 4). The plant thus still goes about the business of living even while it is dying. The poem closes with another image of life, the “nub of growth” (l. 5), probably a nascent bud, pushing through to nudge “a sand crumb loose” and poking its “pale tendrilous horn” through a sheath (ll. 7-8).

This poem, if it stood alone, would principally be a short meditation on the energy and growth of nature in spite of impending death and decay. When coupled with “Cuttings (later),” however, it becomes something more. In the second of the paired poems, the speaker takes a more philosophical tone, asking, “What saint strained so much, / Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?” (ll. 3-4).

This philosophical stance leads the speaker to reflect on his relationship with the natural world: “I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, / In my veins, in my bones I feel it,—” (ll. 5-6). Here, it is almost as if he projects himself into the process that the plant undergoes in order to draw water up into itself, implying that there is a link, whether we recognize it or not, between humans and the rest of the natural world they inhabit.

At the poem’s conclusion, the speaker further aligns himself with the plant, noting, “When sprouts break out, / Slippery as fish, / I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.” (ll. 9-11) The speaker ultimately both reminds us of the importance of our links with the natural world and demonstrates that that world carries the possibility of renewal. Note that he leans to “beginnings” rather than focusing on the imminent death of the cuttings, reminding us, perhaps, that nature, even in the midst of death, still contains life and energy.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Compare the observer in this poem with the observer in James Wright’s poem “Fear Is What Quickens Me.” Wright, who was a student of Roethke’s at the University of Washington, also is a keen observer of nature, but his nature poems offer a different perspective than do Roethke’s. Compare the speakers in each poem. Where and how do they differ in their attitudes about what they see and feel?

2. What are the effects of the hyphenated words and phrases in the first poem? Why do you suppose Roethke hyphenated those words? How do those words/phrases affect the rhythm of the poem?

3. Identify an experience or two in your own life when you felt a connection or a particularly powerful emotional response to some aspect of the natural world. What feelings did this experience evoke, and how do they compare to what Roethke’s attitude seems to be about nature?