SOURCE: "The Poetry of Theodore Roethke," in Western Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter, 1954, pp. 131-46.

Kramer is a prominent art critic who has served on the staff of such journals as Arts Digest, Arts Magazine, Nation, New Leader, New Criterion, and the New York Times. In the following essay, which focuses primarily on the collection Praise to the End!, Kramer maintains that Roethke's treatment of prerational existence represents "the expression of a new primitivism. "

Theodore Roethke is probably the most original poet to appear in America since the twenties. This is not always the highest praise for a poet, especially for an American poet of the last two decades. We know how often this "originality" means only Kenneth Patchen's rearrangement of the typography, or some new promiscuity with commas after the manner of José Garcia Villa. And further, it is not the kind of praise we are likely to...