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
Force
Curse
Barren
Live
Soil
Toil
Bitter
Vegetables
Long
Ugly
Realm
Marred
Things
Son
Bitterness
Unholy
Men
Rock
Weed
Overwhelm
Rocks
Narrow
Vegetable
Universe
Realms
Weeds

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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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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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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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How terrible the need for God.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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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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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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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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 swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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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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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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