Quote

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

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Men
Son
Bitterness
Unholy
Rock
Weed
Overwhelm
Rocks
Narrow
Vegetable
Universe
Realms
Weeds
Force
Curse
Barren
Live
Soil
Toil
Long
Bitter
Vegetables
Things
Ugly
Realm
Marred

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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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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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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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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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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.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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