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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.

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
Friends
Might
Think
Phone
Thinking
Mad
Phones
Afraid
Alone
Call

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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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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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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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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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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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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.
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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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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I came to love, I came into my own.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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