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

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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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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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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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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 poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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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 mind too active is no mind at all.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
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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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke