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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?

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
Guts
Importance
Books
Book
Important

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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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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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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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And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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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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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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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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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 learn by going where I have to go.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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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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.
Theodore Roethke