W.S Merwin on John Berryman

from Flower & Hand (Copper Canyon Press).

BERRYMAN by W.S. Merwin

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

poetry?

JIRI KOLAR, from Artists on Art, Ed. Dore Ashton.

If we take the term primitive art and we consider it in a European context then we accept the fact that this art is created by nonartistic means and for nonartistic purposes. The process of the creation would be nonartistic as well. But all of these creations were done by individuals endowed with innate feeling for plastic images, a sense for color, and an unbound fantasy––by those who were unconsciously sculptors, painters, and poets. Now I am touching upon my point. Naturally none of these primitive people knew how to read or write as we understand it. There is nothing special about that. There are millions of people today who do not know how to read or write. Aren't they the silent artists? The silent poets? What goes on in their minds when someone shows them a handwritten or printed poem? [1978]

poetry

I know there are few things more awful than a non-poet writing a poem, and yet that is exactly what I have done here. (Click on the image to bring up a larger version.)

I hope you like it.