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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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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Light
World
Rise
Flesh
Lovers
Word
Fall
Spirit

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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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.
Theodore Roethke
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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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
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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
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
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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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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.
Theodore Roethke
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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.
Theodore Roethke
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke
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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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I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke