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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
Word
Fall
Spirit
Light
World
Rise
Flesh
Lovers

More quotes by 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.
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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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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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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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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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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 lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
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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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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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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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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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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 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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke