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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
Lovers
Word
Fall
Spirit
Light
World
Rise
Flesh

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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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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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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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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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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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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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 stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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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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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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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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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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