Episode 25: Re-launching "The Membership" | "How to Be a Poem"

[upbeat music] A friend gave me Wendell and Tanya Berry's mailing address last week.

I have been noodling around on a new nonfiction project inspired by Wendell's poem, How to Be a Poet to Remind Myself.

That project was beginning to take shape, and it was time to formally write Wendell and Tanya to ask for permission to explore it further.

In How to Be a Poet to Remind Myself, Wendell does just what the title says.

He gives himself advice on how to be a poet.

But this isn't a listicle on the seven steps to becoming a professional poet.

Here is the poem in full.

How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry, To Remind Myself.

One, 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.

Two, 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.

Three, 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.