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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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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
Theodore Roethke
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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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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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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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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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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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.
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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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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke
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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
Theodore Roethke
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke