The generic self was Theodore Roethke's theme and few have so thoroughly explored the extremes of feeling: the blind inchoate longings of the inarticulate unconscious never very far from pure terror, and the oracular, half-ecstatic moments of mystical intuition when "I" and "other" were brought into a white-hot fusion of identity. Yet what moves most was his commitment to life. His ambition was always to "dive deeper into the material, substantiate."--Preface.