Works
The Far Field
Theodore RoethkeThe Waking
Theodore RoethkeThe Far Field
Theodore RoethkeThe Waking
Theodore RoethkeFamous Theodore Roethke Quotes
“What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?”
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
Source: The Far Field
Source: Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse
“A mind too active is no mind at all.”
Source: The Selected Letters of Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke Quotes about light
“The light comes brighter from the east; the caw
Of restive crows is sharper on the ear.”
"The Light Comes Brighter," ll. 1-2
Open House (1941)
The Lost Son, ll. 161 - 167
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Theodore Roethke Quotes about time
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
"The Right Thing," ll. 1-3
The Far Field (1964)
“Snail, snail, glister me forward,
Bird, soft-sigh me home,
Worm, be with me.
This is my hard time.”
"The Lost Son," ll. 8-11
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: I shook the softening chalk of my bones,
Saying,
Snail, snail, glister me forward,
Bird, soft-sigh me home,
Worm, be with me.
This is my hard time.
“There's time enough.
Behold, in the lout's eye, love.”
"I Cry, Love! Love!," ll. 33-39
Praise to the End! (1951)
Context: 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.
"I Knew a Woman," ll. 22-28
Words for the Wind (1958)
Context: Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
"The Lost Son," ll. 107-111
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Theodore Roethke: Trending quotes
“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Who stunned the dirt into noise?
Ask the mole, he knows.”
"The Lost Son," ll. 66-70
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Who stunned the dirt into noise?
Ask the mole, he knows.
I feel the slime of a wet nest.
Beware Mother Mildew.
Nibble again, fish nerves.
Theodore Roethke Quotes
"The Bat," ll. 5-10
Open House (1941)
Context: He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
"A Field of Light," ll. 45-47
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
“What's left is light as a seed;
I need an old crone's knowing.”
"Meditations of an Old Woman: First Meditation," ll. 15-21
Words for the Wind (1958)
Context: How can I rest in the days of my slowness?
I've become a strange piece of flesh,
Nervous and cold, bird-furtive, whiskery,
With a cheek soft as a hound's ear.
What's left is light as a seed;
I need an old crone's knowing.
“To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing.”
The Shape of the Fire," ll. 88-92
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lake's surface,
When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;
To follow the drips sliding from a lifted oar
Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward;
To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 73-77
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: 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.
“I'll seek my own meekness.
What grace I have is enough.”
"Unfold! Unfold!," ll. 59-64
Praise to the End! (1951)
Context: I'll seek my own meekness.
What grace I have is enough.
The lost have their own pace.
The stalks ask something else.
What the grave says,
The nest denies.
"Night Crow," ll. 4-8
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
“Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain”
"The Sententious Man," ll. 31-36
Words for the Wind (1958)
Context: p>Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire.I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.</p
The Lost Son, ll. 1-4
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
“All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.”
"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 73-78
The Waking (1953)
Context: Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, —
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.
“I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.”
"The Sententious Man," ll. 31-36
Words for the Wind (1958)
Context: p>Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire.I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.</p
“The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.”
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
"The Right Thing," ll. 7-9
The Far Field (1964)
Context: 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.
"I Knew a Woman," ll. 1 - 4
Words for the Wind (1958)
"I Knew a Woman," ll. 22-28
Words for the Wind (1958)
Context: Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
“And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.”
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
Once More, the Round," ll. 11-12
The Far Field (1964)
Context: p>And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake;And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.</p
The Lost Son, ll. 24 - 35
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
"The Renewal," ll. 7-10
Words for the Wind (1958)
“Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease”
"Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," ll. 19-25
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;
They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.
"Unfold! Unfold!," ll. 59-64
Praise to the End! (1951)
“Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!”
"I Knew a Woman," ll. 1 - 4
Words for the Wind (1958)
Context: 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 book The Far Field
"The Abyss"
The Far Field (1964)
Context: 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.
"Open House," ll. 7 - 11
Open House (1941)
“Poetry is not a mere shuffling of dead words or even a corralling of live ones.”
Source: Poetry and Craft (1965), p. 89
"Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," ll. 19-25
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;
They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.
“Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;
Too close immediacy an exhaustion”
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
"The Abyss"
The Far Field (1964)
“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”
Poetry and Craft (1965)
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
The Waking (1953), The Waking
Source: The Collected Poems
Context: 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.
“Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;
What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.”
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
"The Marrow," ll. 11-12
The Far Field (1964)
“I have gone into the waste lonely places
Behind the eye.”
"Meditations of an Old Woman: First Meditation," ll. 76-77
Words for the Wind (1958)
“Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch”
"Root Cellar," l. 1
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 19-24
The Waking (1953)
The Lost Son, ll. 32 - 35
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
"My Papa's Waltz," ll. 1-4
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
“Bless me and the maze I'm in!
Hello, thingy spirit.”
"I Cry, Love! Love!," ll. 20-21
Praise to the End! (1951)
“I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow
Upon that God who knows what I would know.”
Theodore Roethke book The Far Field
"The Marrow," ll. 23-24
The Far Field (1964)
Source: Poetry and Craft (1965), p. 89
“I study the lives on a leaf: the little
Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions.”
"The Minimal," ll. 1-2
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
