About Theodore Roethke: Theodore Huebner Roethke is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation.
What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ...
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...
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going whereI have to go.....Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
Love makes me naked; Propinquity's a harsh master; O the songs we hide singing to ourselves!
Be sure that whatever you are is you.
Self-contemplation is a curse That makes an old confusion worse.
I've recovered my tenderness by long looking; I'm a Socrates of small fury. The waves bends with the fish. I'm taught As water teaches stone. Believe me, extremest oriole, I can hear light on a dry day. The world is where we fling it; I'm leaving whe...
The Mistake He left his pants upon a chair: She was a widow, so she said: But he was apprehended, bare, By one who rose up from the dead.
May my silences become more accurate.
from 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!
God bless the roots! Body and soul are one.
What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
Time marks us while we are marking time.
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
Love begets love. This torment is my joy.
Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
I came to love, I came into my own.
