Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke
Theodore Huebner Roethkewas an American poet. He published several volumes of award-winning and critically acclaimed poetry. Roethke is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 May 1908
CountryUnited States of America
teaching fishing beginners
Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.
jesus teaching looks
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."
real flying suffering
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.
weed son men
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.
fear sleep learning
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.
rowing boat breathe
To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward...
cat journey wind
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
inspirational waiting spirit
A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.
running eye simple
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.
reality dazzle too-much
Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion
heart fire lakes
A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
bones marrow knows
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.
men mystery prisoner
Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
god freedom wind
The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.