Quotes by Theodore Roethke - Page 2

The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Heart
Humility
Self
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I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Bones
Knows
Marrow
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Desire
Partners
Want
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The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
God
Freedom
Wind
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Beautiful
Disorder
Overwhelmed
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Mad
Phones
Thinking
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The light comes brighter from the east; the cawOf restive crows is sharper on the ear.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Crow
East
Light
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A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Inspirational
Lively
Spirit
Waiting
Come
Once
Again
Entertained
Still
Wait
Understandable
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Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Art
Haste
Mean
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The body and the soul know how to play In that dark world where gods have lost their way.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Dark
Play
Soul
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Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Crafts
Lines
Real
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Fall
Light
World
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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Journey
Cat
Hiking
Wind
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My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I'm naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Naked
Self
Shields
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What is desire?-- The impulse to make someone else complete? That woman would set sodden straw on fire.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Desire
Fire
Impulse
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In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Girl
Boys
Writing
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Dear God
Done
Feelings
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I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Learning
Fear
Sleep
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In a dark time, the eye begins to see / I meet my shadow in the deepening shade...Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Dark
Eye
Light
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Men
Mystery
Prisoner
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To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Boat
Breathe
Rowing
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Dying
Longing
Waiting
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I came where the river Ran over stones; My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Rain
Rivers
Summer
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In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Bird
Light
Wings
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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Blessing
Dark
Sleep
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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Rooms
Suggestions
Teaching
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I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms...I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Nature
Bats
Caterpillars
Toads
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The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Space
Distance
Long
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Beginnings start without shade,Thinner than minnows.The live grass whirls with the sun,Feet run over the simple stones,There's time enough.Behold, in the lout's eye, love.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Running
Eye
Simple
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And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Long
Mind
Substance
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil; All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Men
Son
Weed
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You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Poetry
Believe
Miracle
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I learned not to fear infinity, The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, The wheel turning away from itself, The sprawl of the wave, The on-coming water.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Light
Water
White
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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Lovely
Rose
Weed
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I can't go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They're not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Flying
Real
Suffering
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And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Life
Breathing
Giving Up
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A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Fire
Heart
Lakes
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Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;And love, love sang toward.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Dream
Flower
Rain
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I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Break Out
Cutting
Water
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Broken
Mean
Order
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All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Men
Memories
Shine On
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What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Dark
Summer
Wall
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Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Fall
Light
Sleep
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O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant."
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Jesus
Teaching
Use
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I have come to a still, but not a deep center, A point outside the glittering current; My eyes stare at the bottom of a river, At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains, My mind moves in more than one place, In a country half-land, half-water. I am renewed by death, thought of my death, The dry scent of a dying garden in September, The wind fanning the ash of a low fire. What I love is near at hand, Always, in earth and air.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Country
Eye
Moving
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My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
Theodore Roethke / Poet
Boys
Hands
Mother
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