Roethke Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate gray standard faces. — Theodore Roethke

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

As you get older your hair just starts getting a bit darker which makes me sad. So I probably need to surf more. — Laura Enever

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

What grace I have is enough. — Theodore Roethke

From The Auction
I left my home with unencumbered will
And all the rubbish of confusion sold. — Theodore Roethke

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? — Theodore Roethke

Maybe God has a house.
But not here. — 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

In poetry, and in my study in graduate school, I was drawn to a particular poet, Theodore Roethke. I did a dissertation on "The Evolution of Matter and Spirit in the Poetry of Theodore Roethke" for my Ph.D. — Frederick Lenz

The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him ... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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

I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing on stage with bell hooks. — Laverne Cox

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

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

Nothing is scary... everything is a lesson... all is about getting in the perspective. — Deyth Banger

Great faith is the greatest equalizer, the greatest eraser, and the greatest definer. — Ann Voskamp

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

Here, let me break it down for you,
so you know what I say is true:
Teachers? Teachers make a difference!
Now what about you? — Taylor Mali

Why you have so much books?" Mr. Nacifi asks me. I glance at my overflowing bookcases. "I love reading." His eyes narrow like I just said that I love terrorists. — John McLean

Let your memory be your travel bag. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It's your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you. — Theodore Roethke

From Open House
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. — 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

Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace. — Salman Rushdie

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

O my poor words, bear with me. — Theodore Roethke

There have been countless changes in the long history of art. The most significant have been brought about by the genius of a single artist. — Thomas Hoving

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. — Theodore Roethke

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention. — Ernest Hemingway,