Quote

The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!

Theodore Roethke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Living
Assemble
Clumsy
Partner
Partners
Wants
Desire

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
Image
Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
Theodore Roethke
Image
The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke
Image
A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke