"You can't make poetry simply by avoiding clichés."

Theodore Roethke Literature See all quotes by Theodore Roethke →

React to this quote

More by Theodore Roethke

See all

“Stanely Kunitz on his friend Theodore Roethke”

“In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write.”

“There's a point where plainness is no longer a virtue, when it becomes excessively bald, wrenched.”

“Being, not doing, is my first joy.”

“Roethke at the Modern American Poetry Site”

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

Resonant Thoughts

"Money is the password, and all doors, which are closed to the man of lesser means, fly open to those whom Plutus favors. The invention of money, which has no other usefulness except for the commercial…"

— Immanuel Kant

Philosophy1724–1804

#writing

"They have been spoken by Plato, spoken by Zeno, spoken by Chrysippus or by Posidonius, and by a whole host of Stoics as numerous as excellent. I shall show you how men can prove their words to be thei…"

— Seneca the Younger

Philosophy-4–65

#writing