Yesterday, The New Yorker tweeted that Wendell Berry had died. He was 92. They featured, appropriately, his profound poem, The Loved Ones. I sent the news to a few friends. One of them is the director of MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing. We shared some favorites, and today she sent me this wonderful poem, How to Be a Poet. It’s so good I just had to post it.

How to Be a Poet

By Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

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.

Source: Poetry (January 2001)

See some previous blog posts about him:

Wendell Berry is now one of The Loved Ones || The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry || Wendell Berry’s stepping over stones in a stream shows us how he writes a poem and takes a stand || Wendell Berry’s “No going back” is about the generosity of the evolving self through time.

^{— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.}

Tags: how to be a poet, making a poem, removing digital distractions, the value of silence, wendell berry

This entry was posted on September 2, 2026 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Literature, Other poems, Poetry, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.