Theodore Roethke: Trending quotes

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Theodore Roethke: 172 quotes1 like

“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.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

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.

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

Theodore Roethke

“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)

“So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition.”

Theodore Roethke

Source: Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse

“The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.”

Theodore Roethke

“In this place of light: he dares to live
Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings
Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.”

Theodore Roethke

“A mind too active is no mind at all.”

Theodore Roethke

Source: The Selected Letters of Theodore Roethke

“I do not laugh; I do not cry;
I'm sweating out the will to die.

My past is sliding down the drain;
I soon will be myself again.”

Theodore Roethke

“What falls away is always. And is near.”

Theodore Roethke

“I have gone into the waste lonely places
Behind the eye.”

Theodore Roethke

"Meditations of an Old Woman: First Meditation," ll. 76-77
Words for the Wind (1958)

“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

“Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch”

Theodore Roethke

"Root Cellar," l. 1
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

“The light comes brighter from the east; the caw
Of restive crows is sharper on the ear.”

Theodore Roethke

"The Light Comes Brighter," ll. 1-2
Open House (1941)

“I take this cadence from a man named Yeats:
I take it and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.
Yes, I was dancing mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 19-24
The Waking (1953)

“The salt said, look by the sea,
Your tears are not enough praise,
You will find no comfort here,
In the kingdom of bang and blab.”

Theodore Roethke

The Lost Son, ll. 32 - 35
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

“Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —
The right thing happens to the happy man.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Right Thing," ll. 1-3
The Far Field (1964)

“The moon draws back its waters from the shore.
By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan,
And she is what I would. In this light air,
Lost opposites bend down —
Sing of that nothing of which all is made,
Or listen into silence, like a god.”

Theodore Roethke

"The Swan," ll. 15-20
Words for the Wind (1958)