Writing

(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.

“How To Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry

~

Poetry is the art of silence,
the art of knowing when to stop

from “On Silence” by Maurice Manning

~

Once there were songs for everything,
Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting,
For eating, getting drunk, falling asleep,
For sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war.
For death (those are the heaviest songs and they
Have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief)
Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and
Falling apart after falling in love songs.

from “Singing Everything” by Joy Harjo

~

Whenever I have a day off, I write a new poem.
Does this mean you shouldn’t work, or that you
write best on your day off?

For example, this is the poem I wrote today.

from “Circle Poems” by Lew Welch, in Ring of Bone

~

The poem is not the heart’s cry
(Though it seems to be if you have craft enough)
The poem is made to carry the heart’s cry

And only to carry it. And the cry is always the
Same … for all times and every place the
Same perceptions met a hundred times, or once.

The rest is exuberance.
The force left over after dealing with
An undemanding planet in a square time …

No more or less mysterious than the juicing
Of the glands. The need to skip a stone
Across that pond. To yell among the high mountains.

You think you read for the heart’s cry
But you do not. You read because no stone
Ever skips perfectly. Because that mountain

Always lets you down. Because no matter
How you yell the voice bounced back
Is flat. The words are puny.

The need for another world that always works right
Is the heart’s exuberance.
We don’t hide there. We spill over and

Make it.

“For Joseph Kepecs” by Lew Welch, from Ring of Bone