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Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke Books

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Selected poems

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“Wisdom increases and is a burden. I know too many people and why I should love them, and the thought that I love them imperfectly is a constant vexation. My half-life continues. The great error of the American condition: to forget that people are humanity--I don't mean in the cliche sense--but are a part of the whole stream of history, and, whatever else they may be in the Here and Now, should be respected and considered, and loved as far as possible and not thought of as students, colleagues, anonymous neighbors.”

PeopleLoveWisdomHumanityImperfectionBurdens
Book:Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
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“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.”

PoetryWorkDespair
Book:The Lost Son & Other Poems
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