Theodore Roethke Quotes
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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What is desire? The impulse to make someone else complete? That woman would set sodden straw on fire.
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I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.
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Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.
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I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped.
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Love begets love. This torment is my joy.
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And I rejoiced in being what I was.
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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.
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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The soul has many motions, body one.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
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Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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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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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In a dark time, the mind begins to see.
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And I walked, I walked through the light air; I moved with the morning.
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I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.
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You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is.
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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.