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How to Be A Poet by Wendell Berry

By T.

16 January 2011

4.18k

How to Be A Poet
Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

MARGINALIA

Sundays are for thinking, getting a massage, listening to music, doing a little shimmy, and writing poems.

ABOUT WENDELL BERRY

Poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist Wendell Berry was born on August 5, 1934, in New Castle, Kentucky. Berry is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and novels. His collections of poetry include New Collected Poems (Counterpoint, 2012); Given (Shoemaker Hoard, 2005); The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 1988); A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Counterpoint, 1997); Entries: Poems (Pantheon, 1994); Traveling at Home (North Point… (more)