I've got Frost Place on the brain, of course: this week, it's all teaching-conference prep all of the time . . . except when I've got frantic wet gardening on the brain. Maine is a horrible swamp; my herb garden is starting to rot, and the peonies look like they've been in a fight. The grass is a lost cause. So I might as well stop thinking about the erstwhile beauty of the natural world and go back to thinking about teaching poetry.

from On Poetry & Craft

Theodore Roethke

"There is a kind of teaching shorthand: a possibility of suggestion which can be far more powerful than the ablest analysis: for analysis is, after all, a negative function. . . . To make them feel and think simultaneously. To make the thought as real as the sight and smell of a rose: the growth of the student who can be reached in this way is much more rapid."