The Waking, published in 1953, is the poetry collection that earned Theodore Roethke the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954, bringing his work to wide national attention.

Roethke was born on May 25, 1908, in Saginaw, Michigan, and grew up to pursue his education at Arthur Hill High School before going on to the University of Michigan and later Harvard University. He worked as both a poet and a teacher throughout his career, writing in English, and his academic background fed directly into the sustained, disciplined practice that produced the poems gathered in The Waking. His teaching life and his writing life ran alongside each other for decades.

Beyond the Pulitzer, Roethke accumulated a substantial record of recognition. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Golden Plate Award. In 1959 he won the National Book Award for Poetry for Words for the Wind, a second major collection that confirmed the consistency of his output. The awards trace a career built on steady, serious work rather than a single lucky moment.

Roethke died on August 1, 1963, on Bainbridge Island, but his work didn't stop appearing in print with his death. The Far Field, a collection published after he died, won the National Book Award for Poetry posthumously in 1965, making him one of the rare poets to receive that award twice — and the second time without being alive to accept it.