Theodore Roethke Quotes

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.

Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.

The soul has many motions, body one.

In the kingdom of bang and blab.

I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.

Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped.

The light comes brighter from the east; the cawOf restive crows is sharper on the ear.

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

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.

I came to love, I came into my own.

You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is.

Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.

What falls away is always. And is near.

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.

And I rejoiced in being what I was.

Art is our defense against hysteria and death.

Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire

The body and the soul know how to play In that dark world where gods have lost their way.

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

Wake the happy words.

What is desire?-- The impulse to make someone else complete? That woman would set sodden straw on fire.

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.

A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.

To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward.

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.

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.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

(I measure time by how a body sways.)

I trust all joy

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.

What's freedom for? To know eternity.

I learn by going where I have to go

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

What grace I have is enough.

Self-contemplation is a curseThat makes an old confusion worse.

When true love broke my heart in half, I took the whiskey from the shelf, And told my neighbors when to laugh.I keep a dog, and bark myself.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

(Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.)

Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.