I am in Newport, Oregon for the Northwest Poets’ Concord this weekend, a veritable grassroots gathering of the poetic tribes, many who, like me, are not affiliated with academia. How refreshing! There is nothing like going to sleep with the sliding glass doors of your hotel room open and the unceasing sound of the waves hitting the sand your lullaby…
Two other poets and I presented a panel on Friday afternoon about what it has been like returning to poetry as “late bloomers.” Later there was a reading of ars poetica, e.g., poems written about the subject of poetry itself. I read this poem by W.S. Merwin—which isn’t really about the poet, John Berryman, even thought the title might lead you to believe that:
Berryman
I will
tell you what he told me
in the
years just after the war
as we then
called
the second
world war
don’t lose
your arrogance yet he said
you can do
that when you’re older
lose it
too soon and you may
merely
replace it with vanity
just one
time he suggested
changing
the usual order
of the
same words in a line of verse
why point
out a thing twice
he
suggested I pray to the Muse
get down
on my knees and pray
right
there in the corner and he
said he
meant it literally
it was in the
days before the beard
and the
drink but he was deep
in tides
of his own through which he sailed
chin
sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far
older than the dates allowed for
much older
than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped
down his nose with an accent
I think he
had affected in England
as for
publishing he advised me
to paper
my wall with rejection slips
his lips
and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the
vehemence of his views about poetry
he said
the great presence
that
permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry
was passion
passion
was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had
hardly begun to read
I asked
how can you ever be sure
that what
you write is really
any good
at all and he said you can’t
you can’t
you can never be sure
you die
without knowing
whether
anything you wrote was any good
if you
have to be sure don’t write
The public domain image above is a hand-tinted picture postcard of Yaquina Bay, Newport, Oregon, circa 1915.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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Comments 1
passion. is it the center of everything?