This morning I went out for a quick shooting session in the morning fog along Lake Michigan. On the way home the program "Living with Faith" was airing on National Public Radio and featured a poet named Wendell Berry, who read the following poem:
How to be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i.
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill-
more skill 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-dimensional 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.
While listening to the poem I was struck by how perfectly it translated to photography, and likely to many other arts. I am finding it profoundly inspiring and wanted to share it with you all.
Dan
How to be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i.
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill-
more skill 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-dimensional 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.
While listening to the poem I was struck by how perfectly it translated to photography, and likely to many other arts. I am finding it profoundly inspiring and wanted to share it with you all.
Dan
However it is an inspiring poem. Much food for thought.
) They also had to re-write Macbeth as a Beothuk tribal legend. I suspect I am solely responsible for the despair of hundreds of impressionable teenagers.
