Scholars are indebted to Jenijoy La Belle's The Echoing Wood of Theodore Roethke … for its demonstration that Roethke's poetry, increasingly from 1951-on, issues from the poet's dramatized union with another "partner," frequently an idealized woman, a beloved traditional poet, or some fusion of both. Love is the metaphor of Roethke's amalgam, or the conception of poetry becomes synonymous with the act of love.

A poem which otherwise receives scant or no mention but may be a microcosm for the general Roethkean method is "The Swan."… Curiously, its external form, if not its content, resembles no other in Roethke's canon. It is divided into two unequal parts. The first contains two septets, which when joined by rhyme scheme, form a sonnet: abbacdd, then ceffegg. The second part is a sestet introducing a third rhyme scheme (ababcc, still within the sonnet's tradition) and printed completely in italics.

The varying stanza...