How to be a Poet | National Poetry Month 2023

(photo credit; Wendell Berry at his desk.)

April is National Poetry Month in the US. I confess that I struggle with poetry and don’t understand why poets make their decisions:

Why divide your sentences in half like that?

Why put in those random breaks?

Huh. THAT was a poem?

^^ These are all questions that run through my mind while reading poetry. Plus more.

And yet, I keep reading it. One reason is that I want to conquer my fear; another is that, quite often, the poems I read make me smile. There’s a sense of familiarity and camaraderie with the poet that feels like friendship. When you read several collections of one poet’s work, you feel like you have a relationship with that person. You might even find yourself wondering what this poet would think of a particular news story or situation. And that is fun!

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In What Are People For?, Wendell Berry teaches us that “a good poem exists at the center of a complex reminding.” I love this idea of a “complex reminding,” whatever that may be. I think the visual of a complex reminding is poetry in itself – when I first read that line I was startled and taken aback. I repeated a complex reminding to myself for the rest of the day.

I don’t have any insight or anything else to add to that idea, but maybe it’s something you’ll be thinking about today too? It’s an idea worth turning over and over in your more quiet moments.

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I found the poem I’d like to share with you today in Wendell Berry’s collection called The Peace of Wild Things. It’s called How to be a Poet — and it’s another that made me smile. I hope you enjoy it.

How to be a Poet
(to remind myself)

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 work,
doubt their judgment.

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.

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, The Peace of Wild Things