1. Read the poem 

2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. 
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know? 
I hear my being dance from ear to ear. 
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? 
God bless the ground! I shall walk softly there, 
and learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? 
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; 
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great nature has another thing to do 
To you and me; so take the lively air, 
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. 
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. 
I learn by going where I have to go.

—Theodore Roethke

Note: Next Read Around is:
February 19, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

I was introduced to Theodore Roethke’s poem, The Waking, by my high school English teacher, Bob Frye. Mr. Frye was the one who initially inspired a fondness for poetry in me and this was one of his favorites. The apposition of opposites in the opening phrase, I wake to sleep, fascinated me and immediately caught my attention. The poem literally carries the reader along with its ten-syllable drumbeat and the cadence and rhythm of words that seem to roll into each other.

Roethke describes a kind of knowing that operates outside the stilted stops and starts of the cognitive or strategic mind. It is more intuitive, more visceral, more immediate, and more grounded in life. It is both an innate sense and a cumulative gathering of embodied wisdom that you can only learn by going where you go. Perhaps the compelling cadence and rhythm of the poem characterizes the inherent “flow state” of this waking-sleep knowing.

The refrain, I learn by going where I have to go, could be construed as a kind of involuntary compulsion if you take the “have to” as a necessity. In this sense the poet is being lead by places where he must go (by somecalliong? Or by his nature? Or by life?). Or it could refer to a form of possession as in “having” a way or choosing a way that is yours to go. In this sense, it is about how one walks through life. What is your way of knowing where to go in life?

Prompt Menu

1. What does the phrase “I wake to sleep” mean to you? Use the phrase as stem sentence prompt for your writing: I wake to sleep… Consider how you might “take your waking slow” and describe how it might unfold.

2. Roethke says, “I feel my fate in what I cannt fear.” Work a poem around this idea. It could be about how you feel or know your fate; or about what you fear or what you cannot fear. Or write about your relationship to the idea of fate; perhaps an endorsement or a rebuttal to it. Take the prompt wherever it leads you.

3. Take the idea of what there is to know when you “think by feeling” and run with it in a poem. You can use the stem: When I think by feeling, I know….

4. Take a stroll in nature preferably where you can walk softly on the earth (not pavement or sidewalk) and compose a blessing to the ground.

5. Consider the line: “Great nature has another thing to do to you and me:” write a poem about what the other thing might be that nature has to do with us.

6. How can shaking keep you steady? Write about what steadies you when things are shaky.

7. Write about something that has fallen away from you in life, yet is always near.

8. What is your way of knowing where to go in life?

9. Or write from something else that inpsores you in the poem or anywhere else in life that inspires you.