Two readers of this blog have sent me poems that I realize offer not only inspiration to those of us who read and write poems, but inspiration for reading any literature and for attempting to do anything creative in life. The titles of the poems are like bookends: "How To Read A Poem" (by Lloyd Reynolds) and "How To Be A Poet" (by Wendell Berry).
Here are excerpts:
You can read the poem
But that is not the poem.
Watch the white paper
Between the lines.
Look through that white
As through white snow
To see what buttercups and lilies
Are pushing up from below.
from "How To Read A Poem" by Lloyd Reynolds
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.
from "How To Be A Poet", by Wendell Berry
(Thank you Elizabeth and Sarah)
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