Time for joy! In the midst of darkness, light; of gloom, hope. Celebration defies despots. Our bodies you can arrest, but not our spirits.

I know few poems more celebratory than Theodore Roethke’s “I Knew a Woman.” Read it below. If you know it, reread it, let it loft you like a hot air balloon over sylvan hills. If my language too profusely effuses, that is the poem’s effect. It makes me giddy with grinning. You?

Its joy defies. Roethke (1908-1963), like many poets of his generation, battled drink and depression. Unlike many, he did not surrender to them. His imagination insists on the gaiety and suavity of sounds, the therapy of poetry. He turns despair upside down. “What’s madness,” he asks in another poem, “but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstance?” How’s that for turning lemons into lemonade!

The confessional poetry of the twentieth century dragged authors and readers deeper into the slough of despond than verse had ever dared. Suicide became a legitimate, even heroic, theme. That a poem bloomed from the gloom became a testament to a soul’s fortitude. If I can locate loveliness in my loathsome life, I can find it anywhere!

Roethke took another route. He willed joy – “turned that frown upside down” – by means of rhythm, rhyme, wit, turned hell into hallelujah by altering a vowel. Has ever a love-object radiated such loveliness?

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI knew a woman, lovely in her bones,When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!

Such celebration of femininity may strike us nowadays as diminishing. To lust for a woman’s pulchritude is to belittle her other attributes, to make her into a thing, to rape her in effect. True, it is not this woman’s intellect that inflames the poet’s desire.

But doesn’t his exuberance feel innocent? And isn’t jubilation always welcome if it extols without denigrating? The poet is smitten by his beloved’s physicality, not to the exclusion of her personality, but because that’s what burns in his mind (and groin). Nothing could be more natural – or more flattering. She has made the poor boy putty in her hand.

And the poem not only acknowledges his absurdity but joins in the joshing. A bookish sort, he invites “the gods” and Greek-savvy Renaissance poets (Donne, Marvell, et al.) to attend the festivities and dance “cheek to cheek”. “Cheek to cheek” is a comic phrase. Long ago in boyish boisterousness I made a poem about it:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe are lying back to back,ass-symmetrical, so to speak:to the ticking of the darkwe are dancing cheek to cheek.

The poet is funny because he’s having fun. He seems to attach a nose to her hip – a surreal touch that recalls Mister Potato-Head. He depicts himself as a gander honking after his goose, and as a rake following her sickle. Gander and rake, like cheek to cheek, reverberate with double meanings. So does the “stand” she taught him – a term from fencing, yes, also a salute by the male member.

The poem is learned – witty, allusive, slyly musical – while wearing its erudition lightly as fairy-dust. It is a joy to read aloud – a rarity with contemporary verse. It’s also in its by-the-way way profound. “What’s freedom for? To know eternity.” “The shapes a bright container can contain.” “I measure time by how a body sways.” These are claims that linger in mind after the music’s faded, inviting us to ponder and respond.

I love this poem. The chance to share it feels an inordinate gift.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I knew a woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,Or English poets who grew up on Greek(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,Coming behind her for her pretty sake(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I’m martyr to a motion not my own;What’s freedom for? To know eternity.I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days?These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways).