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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.

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
Rather
Heart
Would
Poet

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
Theodore Roethke
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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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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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I came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
Theodore Roethke
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The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
Theodore Roethke
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke