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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
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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Waiting
Intolerable
Another
Adolescence
Place
Ill
Much
Longing
Time
Condition
Defined
Dying
Conditions
More quotes by Theodore Roethke
I came to love, I came into my own.
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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.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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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 calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominableYet 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.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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.
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How terrible the need for God.
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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