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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.

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
Father
Look
Looks
Drained
Stones
Fear

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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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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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
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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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
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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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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
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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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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 have gone into the waste lonely places
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke