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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

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
Disorder
Eternal
Poetry
Words
Beautiful
Virginity
Overwhelmed

More quotes by 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.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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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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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.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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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.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
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In the kingdom of bang and blab.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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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What falls away is always. And is near.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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