The Glass House

This exquisitely written biography of major American poet Theodore Roethke by his close friend and fellow writer Allan Seager was greeted with great enthusiasm in the literary community when it originally appeared in 1968. Kirkus Reviews found The Glass House finely wrought, compassionate, intimate, and bound to be of inestimable value to all future Roethke scholars in its exploration of Roethkes life and its relationship to his art; critic Hugh Kenner called it simply the best American biography. Biographer Allan Seager interviewed a number of Roethkes friends and fellow writers, and he had access to the voluminous notes the poet left behind. Seager reveals the Theodore Roethke who existed behind the public persona a complex, self-contradictory, gentle, often disturbed mysterious, and ruthlessly honest man. One of the books most moving passages is the defense of the poets role within the university, written by a colleague when Roethke was faced with the threat of dismissal. A committed teacher himself, Seager succeeds in doing justice to an often neglected aspect of Roethkes achievement, his remarkable power as a teacher, and his unusual and committed teaching style.