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

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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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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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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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How terrible the need for God.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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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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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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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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