Theodore Roethke was born in 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan, to Otto Roethke, a German immigrant, and Helen Huebner Roethke; his parents owned and managed a commercial greenhouse. Although Roethke experienced great success as a young writer when his speech for the Junior Red Cross at 13 became well-known enough to be translated into 26 languages, he also suffered great loss at only 14, when his father died of cancer and his uncle of suicide. Roethke carried that grief and sense of abandonment for much of his life. Roethke attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate; he took graduate courses at both the University of Michigan, where he got a master's degree, and Harvard University,...
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