Some poems relate a message far from personal. Others convey the author's most deepened thoughts and feelings. This particular poem could be categorized in the area that portrays deep, personal, and heart wrenching writing. "Dolor" written by Theodore Roethke expresses his feeling of misery and uselessness. Theodore Roethke states, "I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, / Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight, / All the misery of manila folders and mucilage" (Roethke lines 1-3). These three lines can be interpreted as Roethke feeling alone and useless. He is stating that he is capable of relating to the sad pencils, along with being miserable like the manila folders. He immediately applies to the reader's …show more content…
He continued to successfully use personification throughout the first half of his poem. Cynthia Kotana wrote that Theodore Roethke used personification to validate his pervasive mood throughout the poem. She then goes on to state that "The repeated attribution of negative emotions to the paraphernalia of office life highlights the persona's ability to strongly empathize, to achieve John Keats's 'Negative Capability,' as well as to set up the irony of objects full of feeling in a place where humans are increasingly objectified." (Kotana 6). Theodore Roethke writes, "And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions, / Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica, / Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium" (Roethke 9-11). These particular lines are extremely personal thoughts and emotions. He writes in extreme detail about the dust from an institution he had been to. He then compares the nearly invisible dust to be so thin like his boredom on a long afternoon. These three lines also convey the idea that he is lifeless. Cynthia criticizes this piece of the poem by stating, "The narrator of the poem imagines the very dust on the