How to Be a Poet

"How to Be a Poet" 

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.   

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. 

IMAGE: Edvard Munch, Inger on the Beach (1889) 

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 174

Prosperity is the nurse of ill temper. 

IMAGE: Charles Le Brun, The Face of an Angry Man (c. 1670) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 78.3

Let us now return to the consideration of the characteristic disadvantage of disease: it is accompanied by great suffering. The suffering, however, is rendered endurable by interruptions; for the strain of extreme pain must come to an end. No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short. 
 
The severest pains have their seat in the most slender parts of our body; nerves, joints, and any other of the narrow passages, hurt most cruelly when they have developed trouble within their contracted spaces. 
 
But these parts soon become numb, and by reason of the pain itself lose the sensation of pain, whether because the life-force, when checked in its natural course and changed for the worse, loses the peculiar power through which it thrives and through which it warns us, or because the diseased humors of the body, when they cease to have a place into which they may flow, are thrown back upon themselves, and deprive of sensation the parts where they have caused congestion. 
 
So gout, both in the feet and in the hands, and all pain in the vertebrae and in the nerves, have their intervals of rest at the times when they have dulled the parts which they before had tortured; the first twinges, in all such cases, are what cause the distress, and their onset is checked by lapse of time, so that there is an end of pain when numbness has set in. 
 
Pain in the teeth, eyes, and ears is most acute for the very reason that it begins among the narrow spaces of the body—no less acute, indeed, than in the head itself. But if it is more violent than usual, it turns to delirium and stupor. 
 
This is, accordingly, a consolation for excessive pain—that you cannot help ceasing to feel it if you feel it to excess. 
 
The reason, however, why the inexperienced are impatient when their bodies suffer is, that they have not accustomed themselves to be contented in spirit. They have been closely associated with the body. Therefore, a high-minded and sensible man divorces soul from body, and dwells much with the better or divine part, and only as far as he must with this complaining and frail portion. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 78 
 
If my goal is simply to live with understanding and with love, which can be complete at any given moment, why would I demand to be given more time? The end as a purpose is not hindered by the end as a conclusion; the excellence is not limited by the duration. 
 
As much as I may fret over ceasing to exist, a prospect that asks me to consider the paradox of an awareness about no longer being aware, I find myself worrying more about the pain that will accompany the departure. Yes, but how much will it hurt? Will I have the strength to bear it? Memory has a way of dulling the sting, and yet there are some torments from the past I’m not sure I could manage to revisit. 
 
I intensely dislike it when people brag about the intensity of their afflictions, so I remember not to compare my sufferings with those of others. I have gone through my versions of misery, and you have gone through yours, and there is little point in claiming one to be more “worthy” than another. What will matter, Seneca tells us, is how Nature has given our minds the capacity to rise above a harm to the body—we fail at this only when we expect to fail. 
 
I am also far more familiar with emotional pain than I am with physical pain, so I recognize how I must imagine a torture of the flesh to be more like the distress of the spirit I already know. Nevertheless, I can still refer to three excruciating injuries to give me a better perspective: a thumb crushed in a heavy steel door, a torn tendon in my ankle, and a fractured skull that never properly healed. Each gives me a context to reflect on Seneca’s account. 
 
At the most basic level, if the pain is bearable, then I should have confidence in my character, and if the pain is unbearable, then I should feel honored to finally be relieved of my duties. This only sounds harsh when I am weaseling my way out of my responsibilities, and it becomes and inspiration when I focus on what I am able to do, instead of what might be done to me. 
 
In more modern terms, I take Seneca’s “slender parts” to be like critical junctures, the central clusters of the body that bind our functions together and receive the greatest stress; these will hurt the most, because they sustain the most, and any damage to them will cause a worse handicap. 
 
Though there will be those extreme instances when I heartily protest, I can assure myself that there will always be lulls in the assault, and how the most frightful pain also has a way of producing a soothing numbness, even building up an increased power of endurance. 
 
When I squashed my thumb, I initially didn’t feel anything at all; what was actually most disturbing was the mere sight of a mangled piece of me. There was eventually a throbbing ache, which I managed by thinking of every pulse as one heartbeat closer to healing. 
 
The torn tendon was silent if I remained absolutely still, but it made me scream in agony with the slightest movement. It was only the pauses between the jolts that made it tolerable, and I am sure I would have passed out if the pain had been continuous. 
 
My cracked head is somewhat different, because I’m fairly certain the condition is permanent. I laugh off the shooting pains that arrive whenever the weather changes, or whenever I feel especially anxious, by imagining what a John Wayne character would.do. Remarkably, this works for me. 
 
None of it has been pleasant, and yet none of it has taken away my dignity, though the yelping on account of the ankle was awkward for a few months. In fact, when my mind is at peace, I give these injuries a certain honor, for they have fortified my discipline of constancy. 
 
And that’s the key, isn’t it? When I cling to my understanding of the true and the good, I acquire the uncanny ability to look down at the impressions, to become their master, not to tremble like a slave. The achievement is in the order of my judgments, not in the body, and that is a habit well worth forming. 

—Reflection written in 11/2013 

IMAGE: Gustave Courbet, The Wounded Man (c. 1854) 

The Tomb

William Blake, Mary Magdalene at the Sepulcher (c. 1805) 

Like the Water

"Like the Water" 

Wendell Berry 

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy. 

IMAGE by Marc Adamus 

Aesop's Fables 80

The Buffoon and the Countryman 

At a country fair there was a Buffoon who made all the people laugh by imitating the cries of various animals. He finished off by squeaking so like a pig that the spectators thought that he had a porker concealed about him. 

But a Countryman who stood by said: "Call that a pig's squeak! Nothing like it. You give me till tomorrow and I will show you what it's like." 

The audience laughed, but next day, sure enough, the Countryman appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed so hideously that the spectators hissed and threw stones at him to make him stop. 

"You fools!" he cried, "see what you have been hissing," and held up a little pig whose ear he had been pinching to make him utter the squeals. 

Men often applaud an imitation, and hiss the real thing. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 78.2

All these things gave me the inclination to succor myself and to endure any torture; besides, it is a most miserable state to have lost one’s zest for dying, and to have no zest in living. 
 
These, then, are the remedies to which you should have recourse. The physician will prescribe your walks and your exercise; he will warn you not to become addicted to idleness, as is the tendency of the inactive invalid; he will order you to read in a louder voice and to exercise your lungs the passages and cavity of which are affected; or to sail and shake up your bowels by a little mild motion; he will recommend the proper food, and the suitable time for aiding your strength with wine or refraining from it in order to keep your cough from being irritated and hacking. 
 
But as for me, my counsel to you is this—and it is a cure, not merely of this disease of yours, but of your whole life—“Despise death.” 
 
There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death. There are these three serious elements in every disease: fear of death, bodily pain, and interruption of pleasures. 
 
Concerning death enough has been said, and I shall add only a word: this fear is not a fear of disease, but a fear of nature. Disease has often postponed death, and a vision of dying has been many a man’s salvation. You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill-health, that you have escaped. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 78 
 
My snide remarks will sometimes lead people to assume that I despise all doctors and lawyers, which is certainly not the case; I have the greatest respect for both vocations, though I am deeply disappointed to find so many aspirants falling short. In all of my travels, I fear I have only known one selfless doctor and one honest lawyer, which tells me that we have much work to do on our standards of health and justice. 
 
And in case you suspect any bias, I fear that the academics are hardly better. A supposed professionalism is vastly overrated; with Wendell Berry, I have a far greater faith in the motives of the amateur. 
 
Beyond the problem of seeking a tidy profit for their services, physicians are often confused about the very source of human well-being. They are right to offer prescriptions for our aches and pains, even as these panaceas will swiftly change with the fashions of the day, yet they are wrong to consider us as if we were nothing more than bags of flesh and bone. While their treatments are perhaps a beginning, they can surely not be the end. 
 
Lofty scholarship will not provide the cure any more than medicine, but a personal commitment to genuine philosophy, with no interest in fame or fortune, will remove the disorder at the root, by liberating us from our darkest fears. The doctor thinks his job is done once he has suppressed the patient’s symptoms, while the philosopher reveals the power of indifference to any conditions. 
 
I am grateful for this clear and concise division of my anxieties: I am frightened of dying, I am frightened of receiving pain, and I am frightened of losing pleasure. While these are my passions speaking to me, I am so much bigger than the sum of my appetites. 
 
As for the first, Seneca reminds us of a basic Stoic principle, one he has explained to Lucilius many times before: death is a part of our nature, and so it cannot be an evil. The dread of our mortality fades away after virtue is established as our highest good. 

—Reflection written in 11/2013 

IMAGE: Gerrit Dou, The Quack (1652) 

Abandoned Places 59

Nature 61

IMAGE by Sergio Tapiro 

Seneca, Moral Letters 78.1

Letter 78: On the healing power of the mind   
 
That you are frequently troubled by the snuffling of catarrh and by short attacks of fever which follow after long and chronic catarrhal seizures, I am sorry to hear; particularly because I have experienced this sort of illness myself, and scorned it in its early stages. 
 
For when I was still young, I could put up with hardships and show a bold front to illness. But I finally succumbed, and arrived at such a state that I could do nothing but snuffle, reduced as I was to the extremity of thinness. I often entertained the impulse of ending my life then and there; but the thought of my kind old father kept me back. 
 
For I reflected, not how bravely I had the power to die, but how little power he had to bear bravely the loss of me. And so I commanded myself to live. For sometimes it is an act of bravery even to live.
 
Now I shall tell you what consoled me during those days, stating at the outset that these very aids to my peace of mind were as efficacious as medicine. Honorable consolation results in a cure; and whatever has uplifted the soul helps the body also. 
 
My studies were my salvation. I place it to the credit of philosophy that I recovered and regained my strength. I owe my life to philosophy, and that is the least of my obligations! 
 
My friends, too, helped me greatly toward good health; I used to be comforted by their cheering words, by the hours they spent at my bedside, and by their conversation. Nothing, my excellent Lucilius, refreshes and aids a sick man so much as the affection of his friends; nothing so steals away the expectation and the fear of death. In fact, I could not believe that, if they survived me, I should be dying at all. 
 
Yes, I repeat, it seemed to me that I should continue to live, not with them, but through them. I imagined myself not to be yielding up my soul, but to be making it over to them. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 78 
 
I don’t often get sick, but when I do, it hits me like a ton of bricks. Others have the sniffles or feel a bit achy, while I am knocked on my back for a week, complete with trembling chills or feverish hallucinations. The congestion in my head or chest will feel like dull knives, and the panic that comes from being unable to breathe will make me mumble prayers I was sure I had long forgotten. 
 
As easy as it is to brush aside the illness of a stranger, it becomes earth-shattering once my own turn happens to come around. And if a case of what we now generically call the “flu” can lay me so low, how shall I respond when the ailment is chronic, and I can see no end in sight? What use will my fancy philosophy be to me then? 
 
It will, as it turns out, make all the difference. Wherever the pain may be, in the flesh or in the spirit, it is only an understanding of meaning and of purpose that can transform any suffering into an opportunity for restoration. This is a lesson to be learned in the trenches, not merely from the dusty pages of a book. 
 
The younger Seneca kept going on for the sake of his father, and in doing so he came to appreciate something more about his own inner worth. I also know how a fear of hurting others was a means for finally beginning to care for myself. 
 
While I will not deny any man his hopes, I am suspicious of those who rely too heavily on the power of wishful thinking; for all of its influence, I should not expect the concentration of mind to magically mend a broken bone or to rid me of my cancer. No, my thoughts do not control my circumstances, yet they do determine how I will go about coping with them, and it is in this sense that I believe an attitude to be the best form of cure. 
 
Despite my skepticism, I have seen remarkable things happen when the mind is in tune with the body, which should come as no surprise, for the human person is made as a single whole, not as an accidental assembly of parts. Most importantly, the cultivation of self-awareness allows for every condition to acquire a redeeming value: instead of asking what it will do to me, it is better to ask what I will do with it. 
 
Philosophy, as the way our judgments inform all of our actions, is the ultimate arbiter of our lives, whether or not we choose to recognize it. It may not decide how long we live, but it is what makes our lives worth living. 
 
Friends, those who travel together with us, become indispensable supports during the journey, inspiring us to choose the true, the good, and the beautiful. They do not save us from grief, but they do assist us in saving ourselves. 
 
Though my philosophy is obscure, and I possess very few friends, I find my strength in quality over quantity. Nature has provided the remedy by always allowing us to love, and to be loved. 

—Reflection written in 11/2013 

IMAGE: Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu (1919) 

Maxims of Goethe 66

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt. 

IMAGE: Francisco Goya, Fire at Night (1793) 

Stockdale on Stoicism 48

Why did those men in "cold soak" after their first rope trip eat their hearts out and feel so unworthy when the first American contacted them? Epictetus knew human nature well. 

In that prison laboratory, I know of not a single case where a man was able to erase his pangs of conscience with some laid-back, pop-psychology theory of cause and effect. 

Epictetus emphasizes time and again the fact that a man who lays the causes of his actions onto third parties or forces is not leveling with himself. He must live with his own judgments if he is to be honest with himself. 

"But if a person subjects me to fear of death, he compels me," says a student. 

"No," says Epictetus, "It is neither death, nor exile, nor toil, nor any such things that is the cause of your doing, or not doing, anything, but only your opinions and the decisions of your Will." 

"What is the fruit of your doctrines?" someone asked Epictetus. 

"Tranquility, fearlessness, and freedom," he answered. 

You can have these only if you are honest and take responsibility for your own actions. You've got to get it straight! You are in charge of you. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison 

IMAGE: Caspar Jacobsz Philips, Various Methods of Torment Employed by the Inquisition (c. 1770) 

Delphic Maxims 75

Χάριν ἐκτέλει 

Fulfill a favor 

IMAGE: Jean-Leon Gerome, Androcles (c. 1902) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 77.9

Gaius Caesar was passing along the Via Latina, when a man stepped out from the ranks of the prisoners, his grey beard hanging down even to his breast, and begged to be put to death. 
 
“What!” said Caesar, “are you alive now?” 
 
That is the answer which should be given to men to whom death would come as a relief. 
 
“You are afraid to die; what! are you alive now?”
 
“But,” says one, “I wish to live, for I am engaged in many honorable pursuits. I am loth to leave life’s duties, which I am fulfilling with loyalty and zeal.” 
 
Surely you are aware that dying is also one of life’s duties? You are deserting no duty; for there is no definite number established which you are bound to complete. There is no life that is not short. 
 
Compared with the world of nature, even Nestor’s life was a short one, or Sattia’s, the woman who bade carve on her tombstone that she had lived ninety and nine years. Some persons, you see, boast of their long lives; but who could have endured the old lady if she had had the luck to complete her hundredth year? 
 
It is with life as it is with a play—it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is. It makes no difference at what point you stop. Stop whenever you choose; only see to it that the closing period is well turned. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 77 
 
The Stoic Turn is ultimately another expression of a perennial wisdom, to be found in so many noble cultures and traditions: redefine your very measure of the good, and you will overcome any grief, fear, gratification, or lust. What we often call living is really a form of dying, and our fear of dying is really a failure at living. 
 
Caesar may have spoken harshly, but he uttered words that everyone needs to hear. If asked what we believe makes a life worth living, what will be our usual responses? We will point to pleasant feelings and comfortable circumstances, the more the better, while the odd fellow who appeals to a spark of character will be eyed with the deepest suspicion. 
 
And yet, if we only bother to reflect for a moment, what could be more absurd than making happiness dependent upon the outer things, and not upon our inner selves? The prisoner is no longer alive, because he despairs without the freedom of his body. The man of ambition is no longer alive, because he clings to his worldly honors. One begs for it to end, and the other doesn’t wish to depart, and both have judged their value from a false premise. 
 
It truly isn’t about the living or the dying in themselves, but about the way we go about the living or the dying. I shouldn’t care if I have a hundred years to do my work, or just a minute to prove my moxie. I admire Nestor because he sought to be wise, not because he grew old, and I pity Achilles because he was intemperate, not because he died young. 
 
I once received a standing ovation for playing a rather difficult double bass line in a chamber orchestra performance. Though I was still an impetuous young pup, I immediately realized why the recognition didn’t matter as much as the satisfaction of my own efforts, and I remember feeling how this was enough. It was over in an instant; there didn’t have to be a sequel. 
 
“But you need to survive! To do more! That’s what counts!” 
 
No, I need to thrive, even if only for two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Once I learn to cherish the virtues above anything else, I am free to exit the stage after I have played my little part. 

—Reflection written in 11/2013 

IMAGE: Joseph-Désiré Court, Achilles Introduced to Nestor (1820) 

Henry David Thoreau 7

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (22 June, 1839) 

IMAGE: Raphael, Self-Portrait with a Friend (1519) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 12

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. 

It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. 

The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. 

As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin—congestion of the brain, apoplexy, and strangulation. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Natural History of Intellect 

IMAGE: Pietro Testa, The Symposium (1648) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 263

Q: What is the world like? 

A: It is like an Âmlâ fruit, all skin and stone with but very little pulp, the eating of which produces colic. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 77.8

You know the taste of wine and cordials. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand measures pass through your bladder; you are nothing but a wine strainer. 
 
You are a connoisseur in the flavor of the oyster and of the mullet; your luxury has not left you anything untasted for the years that are to come; and yet these are the things from which you are torn away unwillingly.
 
What else is there which you would regret to have taken from you? Friends? But who can be a friend to you? 
 
Country? What? Do you think enough of your country to be late to dinner? 
 
The light of the Sun? You would extinguish it, if you could; for what have you ever done that was fit to be seen in the light? 
 
Confess the truth; it is not because you long for the senate chamber or the forum, or even for the world of nature, that you would fain put off dying; it is because you are loth to leave the fish market, though you have exhausted its stores.
 
You are afraid of death; but how can you scorn it in the midst of a mushroom supper? You wish to live; well, do you know how to live? You are afraid to die. But come now: is this life of yours anything but death? 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 77 
 
We are inclined to cling to our pleasures as a reason for making this life worth living, and yet they have an uncanny way of leaving us jaded. I have now been spinning around on this little rock for long enough to know how the craving for the perfect high will inevitably lay you low. 
 
I affectionately describe these sorts of passages as Seneca’s “rants”, though I hardly believe he is just speaking out of rage. I also don’t imagine that his disapproval is directed at Lucilius, who, while still green behind the ears, is very much a kindred spirit. I take them rather as stern warnings, somber reminders of what any one of us can all too easily become. 
 
On one level, when the appetites are in harmony with the understanding, the enjoyment of food, drink, or sex should be a marvelous thing, yet on another, when our passions enslave our judgments, such blessings are twisted into curses. A creature that was made to stand tall in mastery can now merely grovel in submission. 
 
Only those who find nothing at all to be shameful will be offended by a proper scolding. I was told often enough how drunkenness, gluttony, or lust would reduce me to a quivering wreck, and I didn’t listen because I permitted my feeling to run ahead of my thinking. If you haven’t been there, I do not wish it upon you, but the fool must first hit bottom before he can raise himself up. 
 
To recall how pathetic I may have been yesterday is a calling to finally choosing some dignity for today. How fitting that joy will come at that very moment when compulsion is left behind: the peace is in the liberty of awareness, not in a bondage to the impressions. 
 
It is more than symbolic to say that a man should be guided by his head and his heart, not by his gullet, his belly, and his crotch. What then remains of me but a bundle of instincts, which makes me no better than a jellyfish? I maintain that the difference between a “classical” and a “modern” view of human nature is whether we decide to be rational or to be randy. 
 
How can I love my friends if I limit myself to gratification? How can I serve my neighbors if my loyalty depends upon a fat belly? How can I claim to be satisfied, when I am constantly demanding more and more amusements? It turns out that my fear of death is actually a fear of becoming responsible for myself. 
 
I have spent too much time pretending at having “fun”, while in the clutches of my soul’s emptiness. The alternative is to learn a lesson from Seneca’s censure, to grow up before I am debased into that bitter, old hedonist at the end of the bar. 

—Reflection written in 11/2013 

IMAGE: Jan Steen, The Wine is a Mocker (1664)