The Lost Son (1948). Content and Description

“The Lost Son” is a longer, meditative poem in five sections. Each section is set in a different time and place, and most critics agree that the occasion that triggered this poem was the death of Roethke’s father, Otto, in 1923, when Roethke was only 14 years old. The poem is not only a meditation on death but also a reflection on childhood and the ways in which humans make their way through the world despite tragic losses.

The first section, “The Flight,” is set in a cemetery; the speaker tells us, “At Woodlawn I heard the dead cry,” and he was “lulled by the slamming of iron” (ll. 1-2). The speaker is understandably disoriented after the death of a loved one and later in the section is sitting in an “empty house” asking “which is the way I take” (l. 25). These questions trigger a remembrance of earlier childhood and of a time when the speaker ran through fields to a river bog.

The second section, “The Pit,” is a short section containing a series of questions such as “Where do the roots go?” and “Who put the moss there?” Such questions could be interpreted to indicate that the young speaker is still looking at the forest floor and being reminded of the grave he saw in the first section. The third section, “The Gibber,” is very loosely held together and is the section most difficult to read.

This befits the title of the section, since gibber means “to talk nonsense.” It is almost as if the speaker, still suffering from the loss of his father, has lost his way and can no longer make sense of his world. This section alternates fairly concrete imagery and narrative (“What gliding shape / Beckoning through halls, / Stood poised on the stair, / Fell dreamily down?”) with somewhat more disjointed images and questions (“My veins are running nowhere. Do the bones cast out their fire?”). The fourth section, “The Return,” finds the speaker returning in time to the greenhouse he haunted as a boy.

In this section, the speaker begins to find a peace within, and again, the natural world exhibits redemptive qualities, especially when the speaker notices that “the roses kept breathing in the dark.” This feeling of hope or recovery is also present in the last section, titled “‘It was beginning winter.’” This section begins with a description of winter, of “blue snow” on the ground and the “bones of weeds” “swinging in the wind.” Since winter is traditionally the season of death, one might assume that the speaker is still focusing on the loss of this father, but by the end of the section, the speaker mentions “clear air,” “light,” and the word alive, signaling that perhaps he has entered the realm of the living again.

The final lines of the poem would seem to bear this out. After his journey through death, depression, and loneliness, the speaker concludes the poem with this: “A lively understandable spirit / Once entertained you. / It will come again. / Be still. / Wait.” The speaker, therefore, has gone from a place of great despair and loss to a place of hope. The closing lines indicate that if one can endure difficult times, one cultivates the patience needed to anticipate better days.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Read the fourth section carefully. How does Roethke use images to propel the reader from despair to hope?

2. What is the speaker’s attitude about death in each section? How does Roethke indicate the speaker’s changing attitude?

3. Make a list of all of the references to animals in the poem. Why would Roethke use so many images of animals?