#the collected poems of theodore roethke

[soracities]

Theodore Roethke, from "The Dream", The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke [ID'd]

[dk-thrive]

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. We think by feeling. What is there to know?

— Theodore Roethke, from "The Walking" in “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”. (Doubleday, 1961) (via Thoughts)

[joytri]

I cried, and the birds came down and made my song their own.

Theodore Roethke, from "Words for the Wind", The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke [ID'd]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Andrew Wyeth, The Corner (Dry-brush), 1953, The Delaware Art Museum

+

(excerpt from) The Far Field

1

I dream of journeys repeatedly: Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel, Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula, The road lined with snow-laden second growth, A find dry snow ticking the windshield, Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic, And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror, The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone, Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut, Where the car stalls, Churning in a snowdrift Until the headlights darken. —Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday, 1992).

[wild-rose-bud]

“Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.”

-Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems; “In A Dark Time”

[keemeekaal]

❤️ POÂMES :)

PO #007 ▪��� the waking by Kurt Elling & @0paline

• VILLANELLE & @klaudiamimi

[sageandscorpiongrass]

On Breath, On Change.

A Close Call, Jack Gilbert | Words for the Wind, Theodore Roethke | Today Today, Jack Stauber | Desire Paths | Breath, Rainer Maria Rilke | @/jupiter-suggestion on Tumblr | "Here I Am", Songs from Under the River: A Collection of Poetry, Anis Mojgani | Pen And Paper And A Breath Of Air, Mary Oliver | Painting via Iris Scott, Lyrics from The Record Player Song, Daisy the Great | War Photo 2, Margaret Atwood | Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, David Wojnarowicz | I wandered lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth | Erosion, Jamie Oliveira | Eventide Oil, Chris Long | A Poem About Change, Ms Moem | Brave as a Noun, AJJ

[89rooms]

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.

Theodore Roethke - 'The Collected Poems;' “In A Dark Time,”

[amplifyme]

So I had to drag my ass off the couch and to my desk to share this. I know most of y'all won't give a damn. I don't care. This excerpt of a piece of Beauty and The Beast fanfic was written by my mentor, Nan Dibble. Look her up sometime. Her book "Plot" (under the pen name Ansen Dibell) is still a standard in writing classes all over the world. She also wrote two pro BATB novels, as well as several others in the sci-fi genre. She dabbled in the Buffyverse, too.

Nan could write Vincent like no other BATB writer in the fandom. Hers is the one I compare all others to, most especially my own. And she took a character we all-season fans had caught only wonderful glimpses of in S3 and expertly filled in all the missing pieces of Diana Bennett, Vincent's second love, an NYPD detective. This is from the story Inside Out from her Acquainted With the Night series. (Drop me a message if you want a link to it).

All you need to know is that Vincent is a fully functioning empath, the half-lion warrior-scholar heir apparent of a community living in the tunnels below New York City. As he and Diana grow closer, he unconsciously awakens that same latent gift in her (with a kiss, naturally) and it almost kills her. After a three month separation enforced by Vincent, he's taken her down to the deepest levels of the tunnels to keep her out of danger and teach her how to build the barriers she'll need to keep her empathetic abilities from overwhelming her in the world Above. Diana starts us out here:

"What I'm getting at is, we're different. You and me. And things are gonna get real mixed up if you're doing what you think I want when I really don't care, and I'm doing what I think you want when you'd really like something else but you're too polite to say so. What I mean is, we gotta say what we mean here. Be who we are. Agree that different is OK, no apologies, no empty politeness.”

            He met her eyes then, his own grave and very still. After a long minute, he returned his attention to his mug. “You ask something... very difficult.”

            “So it'll be difficult, then. I'll try. Will you?”

            Medium silence. Then, with a judicious finality, he set his mug back on the tray. “Yes.”

            A small word, but one with implications she suspected they'd never be fully done exploring. A word that committed them both, but especially him, to an honesty she'd enforced against all comers and he'd spent his life publicly ducking for the sake of peace. For the sake of acceptance. And stuffing the hard truths away for the Other to gnaw at.

            Softly, he added, “One of the things I love about you is that you force me beyond myself.”

            The comment startled her worse than the one about time. She felt the blush rising in her cheeks. She wasn't used to blunt compliments, matter-of-fact avowals of love. They caught her flat-footed, not knowing what to say.

            Smiling slightly, eyes downcast, he said, “And your honesty. Forthrightness. And that you are lovely in your bones, so that there is a grace in your least movement, arising as it does out of such stillness. And that even in fear and uncertainty, you are endlessly brave, endlessly kind... May I say such things to you sometimes, Diana? Even though you would rather I did not? For they are true. And I like to say them.”

            Her burning face felt about the same shade as her hair. But fair was fair. Couldn't open that door and then gripe about what came through. “Then I'll try to get used to it. `Lovely bones': my God!”

            “An image from a poem,” he admitted. “By Theodore Roethke. `She moved in circles, and those circles moved...' I have thought of it often. And was sad to know I might never say it to you. You do not like love spoken, as I do. Keeping the silence is sometimes difficult. And a sadness to me.”

            Now it was she who had to take a couple of minutes to collect herself. Then she said, “After that, `You smell real nice' comes out sounding pretty dumb.”

            He glanced up, surprised. “You like that? About me?”

            “Crazy about it. Especially when you'd come through the skylight, been rained on a little. Wonderful, the smell of it in your hair. Or after the bathing pool. It was things like that I missed. So much, sometimes, I didn't think I could stand it. And your voice. Your being there. Everything. Dammit.” She knuckled her eyes.

            The prickly moonlight feeling had started up again, firefly sparks glimmering delicately between them.

            He said, “I have found that one does not love in general, but in the particulars. Moments. As now. I am accustomed... to having only words. But there are other eloquences.”

I mean, c'mon! This is so romantic it makes me want to curl up in a ball and weep. I'm such a sap. 🥹

[alightinthelantern]

Books read and movies watched in 2023 (July to December):

Bolded verdicts (Yes!/Yes/Eh/No/NO) are links to more in-depth reviews! Should you watch/read them?

Books (fiction):

The Starless Sea (Erin Morgenstern): No

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (Zoraida Córdova): Yes

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley): No

The Association of Small Bombs (Karan Mahajan): No

Pond (Claire-Louise Bennett): NO

Heaven (Mieko Kawakami): No

The Verifiers (Jane Pek): No

The Old Capital (Yasunari Kawabata): No

Falling Man (Don DeLillo): No

A Free Life (Ha Jin): Yes

People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks): No

The Spectacular (Fiona Davis): No

Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro): Yes

Children of the Jacaranda Tree (Sahar Delijani): No

This Place: 150 Years Retold (anthology): Yes

Books (nonfiction):

The Forgetting River (Doreen Carvajal): Eh

Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II (Lena S. Andrews): Yes

Mozart's Starling (Lyanda Lynn Haupt): Yes

Poetic Form & Poetic Meter (Paul Fussell): No

Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry (David Mason & John Frederick Nims): No

A Poetry Handbook (Mary Oliver): Yes

We Should Not Be Friends (Will Schwalbe): No

Seen from All Sides (Sydney Lea): No

Books (poetry):

Afterworlds (Gwendolyn MacEwen): Eh

Sailing Alone Around the Room (Billy Collins): Yes

Be With (Forrest Gander): No

Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (William Carlos Williams): Yes

Horoscopes For the Dead (Billy Collins): No

The Wild Iris (Louise Gluck): Eh

Moon Crossing Bridge (Tess Gallagher): Yes

Who Shall Know Them? (Faye Kicknosway): Yes

Great Blue (Brendan Galvin): No

Collected Poems (Basil Bunting): Eh

Paterson (William Carlos Williams): No

Selected Poems (Donald Justice): No

Dear Ghosts, (Tess Gallagher): No

The Death of Sitting Bear (N. Scott Momaday): No

Evidence (Mary Oliver): No

What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? (Robert Bly): Yes

Blessing the Boats (Lucille Clifton): Yes

Source (Mark Doty): No

Tell Me (Kim Addonizio): Eh

Zoo (Ogden Nash): No

Alive Together: New and Selected Poems (Lisel Mueller): No

“A” (Louis Zukovsky): NO

Flying at Night (Ted Kooser): Yes

The Man in the Black Coat Turns (Robert Bly): Yes

This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years (Robert Bly): No

Nine Horses (Billy Collins): Yes

Arabian Love Poems (Nizar Kabbani): Yes

Delights & Shadows (Ted Kooser): Yes

This Great Unknowing (Denise Levertov): Yes

Young of the Year (Sydney Lea): No

Pursuit of a Wound (Sydney Lea): No

The Life Around Us (Denise Levertov): No

Red List Blue (Lizzy Fox): No

It Seems Like A Mighty Long Time (Angela Jackson): No

Some Ether (Nick Flynn): Yes

Divide These (Saskia Hamilton): No

The Simple Truth (Philip Levine): No

Saving Daylight (Jim Harrison): Eh

Midnight Salvage (Adrienne Rich): No

The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (Billy Collins): Eh

My Brother Running (Wesley McNair): Eh

Whale Day (Billy Collins): Eh

Talking Dirty to the Gods (Yusek Komunyakaa): No

A New Selected Poems (Galway Kinnell): No

The Dolphin (Robert Lowell): No

Star Route (George Longenecker): No

Brute (Emily Skaja): Eh

No Witnesses (Paul Monette): Yes!

Blood, Tin, Straw (Sharon Olds): No

Town Life (Jay Parini): No

Dead Men's Praise (Jacqueline Osherow): No

Stag's Leap (Sharon Olds): No

Sleeping with the Dictionary (Harryette Mullen): No

Looking for the Parade (Joan Murray): No

Sparrow (Carol Muske-Dukes): Yes

You can't Get There from Here (Ogden Nash): No

Carver: a Life in Poems (Marilyn Nelson): Yes

The House of Blue Light (David Kirby): No

Ariel (Sylvia Plath): No

Caribou (Charles Wright): No

The Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke: No

Letters from Maine (Mary Sarton): No

Diasporic (Patty Seyburn): Eh

The Five Stages of Grief (Linda Pastan): Yes!

Not One Man’s Work (Leland Kinsey): Yes

Wise Poison (David Rivard): Yes

The Continuous Life (Mark Strand): Eh

On the Bus with Rosa Parks (Rita Dove): Yes

Fuel (Naomi Shihab Nye): Yes

Ludie’s Life (Cyntha Rylant): Yes

Wise Poison (David Rivard): Yes

My Name on His Tongue (Laila Halaby): Yes

Messenger (Ellen Bryant Voigt): Yes!

Unfortunately, it was Paradise: Selected Poems (Mahmoud Darwish): Eh

The Collected Poetry of James Wright: No

The Unlovely Child (Norman Williams): No

The New Young American Poets (anthology, 2000): Yes

The Black Maria (Aracelis Girmay): Yes!

Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Ocean Vuong): Yes!

Thoughts of Her. (Casey Conte): NO

Standing Female Nude (Carol Ann Duffy): Yes!

The Tradition (Jericho Brown): Yes

Girls That Never Die (Safia Elhillo): No

Repair (C. K. Williams): No

The Big Smoke (Adrian Matejka): Yes

American Wake (Kerrin McCadden): Eh

Collected Poems (Jane Kenyon): No

E-mails from Scheherazad (Mohja Kahf): Yes!

I Had a Brother Once (Adam Mansbach): No

Holding Company (Major Jackson): No

Hunting Down the Monk (Adrie Kusserow): No

Happy Life (David Budbill): No

Prelude to Bruise (Saeed Jones): No

Wade in the Water (Tracy K. Smith): Eh

Penury (Myung Me Kim): Yes!

Commons (Myung Mi Kim): Yes!

The Final Voicemails (Max Ritvo): No

Pieces of Air in the Epic (Brenda Hillman): No

Gone (Fanny Howe): No

A Vermonter's Heritage: Listening to the Trees (Rick Bessette): No!

Roget's Illusion (Linda Bierds): No

First Hand (Linda Bierds): No

The Other Side (Julia Alvarez): No

Pig Dreams: Scenes from the life of Sylvia (Denise Levertov): Yes

Movies:

Winter Evening in Gagra (1985, Karen Shakhnazarov): Yes

My Tender and Affectionate Beast (A Hunting Accident) [1978, Emil Loteanu]: No

Fate of a Man (1959, Sergei Bondarchuk): Eh

Ordinary Fascism (aka Triumph Over Violence) (1965, Mikhail Romm): Yes

The Most Charming and Attractive (1985, Gerald Bezhanov): Yes

Gals/The Girls (1961, Boris Bednyj): Yes

Drunken Angel (1948, Akira Kurosawa): Yes

Stray Dog (1949, Akira Kurosawa): No

Viy (1967, Konstantin Yershov/Georgi Kropachyov): No

Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein): Yes

Amarcord (1973, Federico Fellini): Yes!

Charade (1963, Stanley Donen): No

Dreams (1990, Akira Kurosawa): Yes!

Barton Fink (1991, Coen Brothers): No

Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1967, Leonid Gaidai): No

Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia (1974, Eldar Ryazanov & Franco Prosperi): Yes

By the White Sea (2022, Aleksandr Zachinyayev): Yes

Ivan’s Childhood (1962, Andrei Tarkovsky): Yes!

The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed): Yes!

The Kitchen in Paris (2014, Dmitriy Dyachenko): No

Optimistic Tragedy (1963, Samson Samsonov): Eh

White Moss (2014, Vladimir Tumayev): Yes

Oppenheimer (2023, Christopher Nolan): Yes!

Scarlet Sails (1961, Alexandr Ptushko): Yes

We'll Live Till Monday (1968, Stanislav Rostotsky): Yes

Vladivostok (2021, Anton Bormatov): No

Ballad of a Soldier (1959, Grigory Chukhray): Yes

The Theme (1979, Gleb Panfilov): Yes

A Haunting in Venice (2023, Kenneth Branagh): Yes

Barbie (2023, Greta Gerwig): Yes

Is It Easy To Be Young? (1986, Juris Podnieks): Yes

Badlands (1973), Terrence Malick: Yes

Satyricon (1969, Federico Fellini): No

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog): Yes

Fitzcarraldo (1982, Werner Herzog): No

The Illusionist (2006, Neil Burger): Yes

The Duchess (2008, Saul Dibb): Yes

Pride & Prejudice (2005, Joe Wright): Yes!

Emma (1996, Douglas McGrath): No

And here’s Part 1 of my 2023 list!

[mikelogan]

Can you show us some of your tats?!

how does it feel to ask my favorite question of all time lmao (these are most of mine, but there's still more lol

from left to right, top to bottom: neo-trad fox (inspired by in a week by hozier and the violets in the background are bc the wisconsin state flower is a wood violet); a neo-trad raven with red and orange ribbons behind it and an orange orb thing (i love ravens and spooky shit and edgar allan poe); a neo-trad plague doctor in muted colors that my artist referred to as a sad rainbow (got this in january 2020 right before the pandy and felt like i summoned something lol); a sticker-like stylized version of joey king's character in the movie wish i was here and below that is a purple and blue watercolor/paint background with "we think by feeling" in a handwritten script (wiwh is one of my all-time favorite movies and her wig is pretty recognizable + we think by feeling is a line from one of my favorite poems, the waking by theodore roethke, which was also translated into one of my favorite songs of the same name by kurt elling); a black and grey ribcage with splashes of green and blue paint around it (what i refer to as my obscure scrubs tattoo [rib cage bc of the xray in the opening credits and the colors are medical and surgical's scrubs colors]); a collection of leaves from varying plants (monstera deliciosa, homalomena selby, calathea orbifolia, raphidaphora tetrasperma, calathea makoyana, and alocasia frydek) and the first 2 sessions of my sleeve, which is made up of houseplant leaves

send me more tattoo asks!

[soracities]

Theodore Roethke, from "The Sequel", The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke [ID'd]

[poemwithoutahero]

TAG 9 PEOPLE YOU WANT TO KNOW BETTER

i was tagged by @niwara <3 tysm jo!

3 ships: some dynamics i'm currently interested in are eugene/tatyana (eugene onegin), dan/amy (veep) and jonah/amy (superstore)

1st ever ship: gosh i don't know...i feel like it was probably from some middle school fantasy book though

last song: 'isn't it a pity' by george harrison

last movie: 'loving vincent' w/ a dear friend!

currently reading: right now i'm slowly making my way through 'the myth of sisyphus' by albert camus, and i finished 'the collected poems of theodore roethke' this morning!

currently watching: severance s1 (FINALLY, i've been meaning to watch it for ages)

currently consuming: soup <3

currently craving: some kind of little treat (trademarked)...maybe i'll buy a chocolate bar on the way home tomorrow

tagging anyone who wants to do this! <3

[wituwicha]

O who can be both moth and flame?

Theodore Roethke, from "The Sequel", The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

[godsopenwound]

“My Papa's Waltz”, from Collected Poems by Theodore Roethke

[wordscanbeenough]

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire; / What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.

Theodore Roethke, from “The Marrow”, The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke