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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
Virginity
Overwhelmed
Disorder
Eternal
Poetry
Words
Beautiful

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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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?
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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I came to love, I came into my own.
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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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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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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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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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