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How terrible the need for God.

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
Needs
God
Terrible
Need

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
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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 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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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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 wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
Theodore Roethke
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke