I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)


Theodore Roethke at Poetry Foundation

Theodore Roethke at Academy of American Poets

Interpretations of "I Knew a Woman"

The first of the purely sensual poems, "I Knew a Woman," seems, at first glance, completely innocent; but closer examination reveals that the poem's words, like its lady, move "more ways than one." Double meanings dominate the poem: the lady teaches "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand"; the protagonist comes "behind her for her pretty sake"; and love, which likes a gander, "adores a goose." Even lines easily passed over have hidden sexual connotations: ". . .what prodigious mowing we did make." "To mow," in Scots dialect, means to have sexual intercourse. And should there be any doubt as to Roethke's knowledge of this meaning, the reader need only turn to "Reply to a Lady Editor," the poet's tongue-in-cheek response to the editor of a woman's magazine who had clearly missed the poem's suggestiveness; Roethke there calls Dan Cupid a "braw laddie-buck," and advises the editor just to lean herself back if be should arrive.
   --Karl Malkoff
 

"The Waking"

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