Quote

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

Theodore Roethke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
Image
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
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
Image
What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
Theodore Roethke
Image
Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
Theodore Roethke
Image
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Time marks us while we are marking time.
Theodore Roethke
Image
A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke