Quote

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.

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
Turns
Substance
Upon
Spread
Part
Inner
Leafy
Young
Private
Shoots
Long
Green
Tightly
Mind
Soon
Branch
World
Scene
Branches
Turn
Hidden

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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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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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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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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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How terrible the need for God.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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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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