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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
Thinking
Mad
Phones
Afraid
Alone
Call
Friends
Might
Think
Phone

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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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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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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.
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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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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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I came to love, I came into my own.
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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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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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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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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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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
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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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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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