Theodore Roethke Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Theodore Roethke's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Poet Theodore Roethke's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 95 quotes on this page collected since May 25, 1908! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward.

    Theodore Roethke, “The Shape Of The Fire”
  • A mind too active is no mind at all.

    Theodore Roethke, William J. Martz (1966). “The achievement of Theodore Roethke: a comprehensive selection of his poems”
  • 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 (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.71, Anchor
  • 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 (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.73, Anchor
  • Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire

    Fire  
    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.352, Anchor
  • What is desire?-- The impulse to make someone else complete? That woman would set sodden straw on fire.

    Fire  
    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.161, Anchor
  • I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

    Theodore Roethke (2001). “On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke”, p.203, Copper Canyon Press
  • I have gone into the waste lonely places

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.229, Anchor
  • Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

    Theodore Roethke, Carolyn Kizer (2013). “On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose”, p.123, Copper Canyon Press
  • The body and the soul know how to play In that dark world where gods have lost their way.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.162, Anchor
  • I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.

    Theodore Roethke (2006). “Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63”, p.212, Copper Canyon Press
  • Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion

    Theodore Roethke (1975). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, Anchor Books
  • 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 (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.83, Anchor
  • I learned not to fear infinity, The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, The wheel turning away from itself, The sprawl of the wave, The on-coming water.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.288, Anchor
  • The light comes brighter from the east; the cawOf restive crows is sharper on the ear.

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

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.99, Anchor
  • What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?

    Theodore Roethke (2006). “Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63”, p.206, Copper Canyon Press
  • I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.68, Anchor
  • What falls away is always. And is near.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.165, Anchor
  • Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;And love, love sang toward.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.114, Anchor
  • Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.164, Anchor
  • How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.350, Anchor
  • 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.

  • Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.

    Theodore Roethke, Carolyn Kizer (2013). “On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose”, p.133, Copper Canyon Press
  • How terrible the need for God.

    Theodore Roethke (2006). “Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63”, p.149, Copper Canyon Press
  • I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.353, Anchor
  • 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.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.31, Anchor
  • My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I'm naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield.

    Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.17, Anchor
  • 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.

    1948 The Lost Son,'Root Cellar'.
  • Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?

    Theodore Roethke, Carolyn Kizer (2013). “On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose”, p.37, Copper Canyon Press
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 95 quotes from the Poet Theodore Roethke, starting from May 25, 1908! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!