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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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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Ready
Almost
Feeling
Feelings
Done
Perpetual
Something
Dear
Really
Deserve
Begin
More quotes by Theodore Roethke
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
The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
Theodore Roethke
What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Theodore Roethke
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
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
Theodore Roethke
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.
Theodore Roethke
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
When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
Theodore Roethke
How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
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.
Theodore Roethke
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
In the kingdom of bang and blab.
Theodore Roethke
A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
Theodore Roethke
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
And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
I came where the river Ran over stones My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
Theodore Roethke
