"How To Be a Poet"

I've run this poem before, but it's been more than two years, and, after all, one can never have too much Wendell Berry.

I feel a wee bit bad posting this poem on a screen (you'll see why when you read the second stanza) but I'm going to do it anyway. Because sometimes the first place you meet a poet is on a screen, like this one, and I'd hate to think there's someone out there who hasn't met Berry's poetry, even on a screen.


How To Be a Poet
by 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.

(Read the rest here, at the Poetry Foundation.)

The round-up today is at A Teaching Life.