Theodore Roethke Short Quotes

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Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch

Theodore Roethke
Bless me and the maze I'm in!
Hello, thingy spirit.

Theodore Roethke
Tugging all day at perverse life:
The indignity of it!

Theodore Roethke
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

Theodore Roethke
Teaching: one of the few professions that permit love.

Theodore Roethke
I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

Theodore Roethke
When I was a lark, I sang;
When I was a worm, I devoured.

Theodore Roethke
One form of the death wish is the embracing of mediocrity.

Theodore Roethke
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Behind the eye.

Theodore Roethke
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.

Theodore Roethke
Fear was my father, Father Fear.
His look drained the stones.

Theodore Roethke
What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.

Theodore Roethke
I see, in evening air,
How slowly dark comes down on what we do.

Theodore Roethke
Definition of a philosopher: a man who has the right to say maybe.

Theodore Roethke
You must believe: a poem is a holy thing — a good poem, that is.

Theodore Roethke
Old men should be explorers? I'll be an Indian. Ogalala? Iroquois.

Theodore Roethke
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.

Theodore Roethke
What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?

Theodore Roethke
And I walked, I walked through the light air; I moved with the morning.

Theodore Roethke
To be less than you are is so easy: even a child needs no lesson in this.

Theodore Roethke
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

Theodore Roethke
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.

Theodore Roethke
One of the virtues of good poetry is the fact that it irritates the mediocre.

Theodore Roethke
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.

Theodore Roethke
Poetry is not a mere shuffling of dead words or even a corralling of live ones.

Theodore Roethke
Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;
Too close immediacy an exhaustion

Theodore Roethke
Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.
Renew the light, lewd whisper.

Theodore Roethke
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

Theodore Roethke
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow
Upon that God who knows what I would know.

Theodore Roethke
What's the worst portion in this mortal life? A pensive mistress, and a yelping wife.

Theodore Roethke