On Poetry and Craft Quotes

“Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even can enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.”
― Theodore Roethke, On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose

“Your words are you. You are them and not much more. The Description: the fieldness of fields, the weediness of weeds… When is description mere? Never. A freshness in the seeing, an innocency in the vision, the angle of perception, the bringing together of details, not necessarily as metaphors, even, just as objects. Be one of those on whom, as Lawrence said, nothing is lost. Don’t strain for arrangement. Look and put it down and let your sensibility be the sieve.”
― Theodore Roethke, On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose

“When you begin to get good, you’ll arouse the haters of life.”
― Theodore Roethke, On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose