Theodore Roethke Quotes

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion ~ Theodore Roethke

What's freedom for? To know eternity. ~ Theodore Roethke

Necessity starves on the stoop of invention. ~ Theodore Roethke

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire ~ Theodore Roethke

Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm?
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.
(from "The Meadow Mouse") ~ Theodore Roethke

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't. ~ Theodore Roethke

Fourth Meditation"

1

I was always one for being alone,
Seeking in my own way, eternal purpose;
At the edge of the field waiting for the pure moment;
Standing, silent, on sandy beaches or walking along green embankments;
Knowing the sinuousness of small waters:
As a chip or shell, floating lazily with a slow current...

Was it yesterday I stretched out the thin bones of my innocence?
O the songs we hide, singing only to ourselves!
Once I could touch my shadow, and be happy;
In the white kingdoms, I was light as a seed,
Drifting with the blossoms,
A pensive petal.

But a time comes when the vague life of the mouth no longer suffices;
The dead make more impossible demands from their silence;
The soul stands, lonely in its choice,
Waiting, itself a slow thing,
In the changing body.

The river moves, wrinkled by midges,
A light wind stirs in the pine needles.
The shape of a lark rises from a stone;
But there is no song. ~ Theodore Roethke

The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone. ~ Theodore Roethke

Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light. ~ Theodore Roethke

What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible. ~ Theodore Roethke

My bones whisper to my blood; my sleep deceives me. ~ Theodore Roethke

All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure. ~ Theodore Roethke

How terrible the need for God. ~ Theodore Roethke

The Mistake
He left his pants upon a chair:
She was a widow, so she said:
But he was apprehended, bare,
By one who rose up from the dead. ~ Theodore Roethke

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant." ~ Theodore Roethke

ROOT CELLAR
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. ~ Theodore Roethke

I've recovered my tenderness by long looking;
I'm a Socrates of small fury.
The waves bends with the fish. I'm taught
As water teaches stone. Believe me, extremest oriole,
I can hear light on a dry day.
The world is where we fling it; I'm leaving where I am. ~ Theodore Roethke

Brooding on God, I may become a man. ~ Theodore Roethke

I learn by going where I have to go ~ Theodore Roethke

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.
My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I'm naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.
The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth:
Rage warps my clearest cry
To witless agony. ~ Theodore Roethke

The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat. ~ Theodore Roethke

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. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

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

Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

The two duties are to lament or praise. ~ Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

Theodore Roethke was a poet I was raised with so he has a lot of sentimental value for me. ~ Krist Novoselic

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart
of form. ~ Theodore Roethke

Being, not doing, is my first joy. ~ Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. ~ Theodore Roethke

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms ... I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin. ~ Theodore Roethke

By daily dying, I have come to be. ~ Theodore Roethke

The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow. ~ Theodore Roethke

I can't go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They're not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness. ~ Theodore Roethke

I do not laugh; I do not cry;
I'm sweating out the will to die.
My past is sliding down the drain;
I soon will be myself again. ~ Theodore Roethke

Epidermal Macabre
Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes,-
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost. ~ Theodore Roethke

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words. ~ Theodore Roethke

Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul? ~ Theodore Roethke

Beginnings start without shade,Thinner than minnows.The live grass whirls with the sun,Feet run over the simple stones,There's time enough.Behold, in the lout's eye, love. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

Maybe God has a house.
But not here. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. ~ Theodore Roethke

I may look like a beer salesman, but I'm a poet. ~ Theodore Roethke

What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts? ~ Theodore Roethke

Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath. ~ Theodore Roethke

A wave of Time hangs motionless on this particular shore.
I notice a tree, arsenical grey in the light, or the slow
Wheel of the stars, the Great Bear glittering colder than snow,
And remember there was something else I was hoping for. ~ Theodore Roethke

The soul has many motions, body one. ~ Theodore Roethke

What grace I have is enough. ~ Theodore Roethke

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition. ~ Theodore Roethke

From I Knew a Woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain! ~ Theodore Roethke

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

I have gone into the waste lonely places ~ Theodore Roethke

In the kingdom of bang and blab. ~ Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke said it best: I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.10 In ~ Carolyn Baker

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

The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing. ~ Theodore Roethke

Art is our defense against hysteria and death. ~ Theodore Roethke

I prefer the still joy:
The wasp drinking at the edge of my cup;
A snake lifting its head;
A snail's music. ~ Theodore Roethke

Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love. ~ Theodore Roethke

We think by feeling. What is there to know? ~ Theodore Roethke

Civilization is over-rated, but there isn't much else. ~ Theodore Roethke

My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I'm naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield. ~ Theodore Roethke

She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again. ~ Theodore Roethke

When I go mad,
I call my friends by phone:
I am afraid they might think
they're alone. ~ Theodore Roethke

God bless the roots! Body and soul are one. ~ Theodore Roethke

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. ~ Theodore Roethke

She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be. ~ Theodore Roethke

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped. ~ Theodore Roethke

A house for wisdom, a field for revelation.
Speak to the stars, and the stars answer. At first the visible obscures:
Go where the light is. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world. ~ Theodore Roethke

In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

The darkness has it's own light. ~ Theodore Roethke

How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end. ~ Theodore Roethke

And I walked, I walked through the light air; I moved with the morning. ~ Theodore Roethke

I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration. ~ Theodore Roethke

What falls away is always. And is near. ~ Theodore Roethke

Love makes me naked;
Propinquity's a harsh master;
O the songs we hide singing to ourselves! ~ Theodore Roethke

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

Love begets love. This torment is my joy. ~ Theodore Roethke

May my silences become more accurate. ~ Theodore Roethke

I came to love, I came into my own. ~ Theodore Roethke

I kiss her moving mouth,
Her swart hilarious skin;
She breaks my breath in half;
She frolicks like a beast;
And I dance round and round,
A fond and foolish man,
And see and suffer myself
In another being, at last. ~ Theodore Roethke

The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go. ~ Theodore Roethke

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

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys. ~ Theodore Roethke

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will-
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots! -Body and soul are one
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man. ~ Theodore Roethke

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine -
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!-
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-
And that was scary-
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely. ~ Theodore Roethke

It is the people, and not the judges, who are entitled to say what their constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it belongs to them and not to their servants in office - any other theory is incompatible with the foundation principles of our government. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good. ~ Theodore Kaczynski

Do I grow cleverer with age, or does the world grow more stupid? ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Closeness to power heightens the dignity of all men. ~ Theodore White

Most people say that as you get old, you have to give up things. I think you get old because you give up things. ~ Theodore F. Green

When they returned home, he took his young son aside. "Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should," he admonished. "You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." Teedie responded immediately, according to Corinne, giving his ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Northwest is essentially a national domain; it is fitting that it should be, as it is, not only by position but by feeling, the heart of the nation. ~ Theodore Roosevelt