Theodore Roethke was born on May 25, 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan. He was born to Otto and Helen Huebner Roethke. In 1872 Roethke's father and grandfather emigrated from Germany. This is where Roethke's grandfather and father bought 22 acres of land and started a market garden. After making enough money they bought a greenhouse. In 1906 Roethke's father married Helen Huebner, also a German immigrant. This led to the birth of Theodore. While growing up, Roethke helped his father out in the greenhouse taking care of the flowers. While working with plants and nature this deeply affected him as we see it in his poetry.
             From all this time working with his dad Roethke gets one of his major ideas for writing poetry. One poem we can see this in is "CHILD ON TOP OF A GREENHOUSE (1948)."
             "The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,
             My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty
             The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,
             Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,
             A few white clouds all rush eastward,
             A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses,
             And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting! (1-6)
             This poem, it seems, is from Roethke's own experiences. The poem is about Roethke as a child sitting on top of a greenhouse giving us a description of the greenhouse and the nature around him. In line five, Roethke also gives us a sample of how he uses comparisons to describe nature. This gives a person a better vision of the object or motion he is writing about.
             When Roethke was a teenager his father died. This didn't seem to affect him a lot, but through his poetry we can see different. His poetry about his father seems to be of two minds and to have deeply affected him. It seems that Roethke's father put him down when he failed to live up to the expectations. On the positive side of things Roethke loved the way his father looke...