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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?

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
Soul
Nobility
Circumstance
Positivity
Odds
Madness
Positive
Circumstances

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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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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.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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How terrible the need for God.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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.
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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.
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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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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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.
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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