how to be a poet (to remind myself)

there are no unsacred places. there are only sacred places, and desecrated places.

“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.”
Wendell Berry.

you can listen to Wendell read his poem here. you can also read his thoughts on blue herons and joy here:

There is not only peacefulness, there is joy. And the joy, less deniable in its evidence than the peacefulness, is the confirmation of it. I sat one summer evening and watched a great blue heron make his descent from the top of the hill into the valley. He came down at a measured deliberate pace, stately as always, like a dignitary going down a stair. And then, at a point I judged to be midway over the river, without at all varying his wingbeat he did a backward turn in the air, a loop-the-loop. It could only have been a gesture of pure exuberance, of joy — a speaking of his sense of the evening, the day’s fulfillment, his descent homeward. He made just that one slow turn, and then flew on out of sight in the direction of the slew farther down in the bottom. The movement was incredibly beautiful, at once exultant and stately, a benediction on the evening and on the river and on me. It seemed so perfectly to confirm the presence of a free nonhuman joy in the world.

you can read a wonderful interview with him here.

and if you don’t want to be a poet, you can always be a dog.

stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in.

love,

ars poetica.