How would you honor the man who wrote "Four for Sir John Davies," one of the four or five best lyric poems of the twentieth century? With a tasteless monument, as did the state of Michigan?
"His experiences inspired many of his poems"?? Jesus. Anyway, there's that option, or you can paint a Lego man black, make him bald, and give him a nervous facial tick, and voila! 
That is a proper tribute to the genius, who--God bless the roots!--climbed the alien peaks and mutilated his soul in their sick altitudes, returning to tell us,
"Let others probe the mystery if they can,
Time harried prisoners of Shall and Will--
The right thing happens to the happy man."
Everybody should read Roethke, and nobody should etch a blank, bureaucratic Cliffs Notes of his life on public metalworks.
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