The Waking - Wikipedia





	
	

	
	

	The Waking

	
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		"The Waking" is a poem written by Theodore Roethke in 1953 in the form of a villanelle. It is a self-reflexive poem that describes waking up from sleep.[citation needed] It comments on the unknowable[1] with a contemplative tone. It also has been interpreted as comparing life to waking and death to sleeping.[2]


In popular culture[edit]

	The poem appears as an object in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
	An excerpt of the poem also appears at the beginning of Dean Koontz's novel Odd Hours.
	Kurt Elling sings the poem on his 2007 album Nightmoves.
	Quoted by the psycho cop in Stephen King's novel Desperation.


References[edit]


	^ [1] Archived June 13, 2003, at the Wayback Machine

	^ The Waking by Theodore Roethke. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 16 August 2013





External links[edit]

	Source text
	Secondary source of the text






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Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Waking&oldid=993493892"


		Categories: 	American poems
	1953 poems
	Poem stubs


Hidden categories: 	Webarchive template wayback links
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	Articles with unsourced statements from February 2009
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		 This page was last edited on 10 December 2020, at 22:18 (UTC).
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