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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
Poet
Rather
Heart
Would

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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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.
Theodore Roethke
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
Theodore Roethke
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How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
Theodore Roethke
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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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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.
Theodore Roethke
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Theodore Roethke
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
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