This paperback edition contains the complete text of Roethke's seven published volumes in addition to sixteen previously uncollected poems. Included are his Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners The Walking, Words for the Wind, and The Far Field.

These two hundred poems demonstrate the variety of Roethke's themes and styles, the comic and serious sides of his temperament, and his breakthroughs in the use of language. Together they document the development of an extraordinary creative source of American poetry.