How to Be a Poet
By Wendell Berri
(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.
What is something that sustains you? Writing has always sustained me in one way or another. Mostly just for myself, to myself, to process myself and my life. I’m not great at journaling. But I write poems. I have since I was young and had that journal with the cat on the cover, and a pink border. Wide lines. I always write from right to left. Right side, then left side. Turn the page. I right from writing.
That one time when I lived in Central America, and had to go to the cyber cafe to get internet. I didn’t have a cell phone, hardly anyone did then. But I needed to write about my experiences, to get out what I witnessed, to have some way of handling who and were I was at that time. Down the road to the corner. Take a left, go up a couple of blocks. I could be there for hours. My tiny blog, it helped me stay in touch back home. It helped me through community turmoil, working with banana plantation survivors, witnessing the election of an eventual dictator who once fought to overthrow a dictator, and so many other shades of life.
Writing is an old friend, reliable, just me and a keyboard, me and scraps of paper and a pen, me and many half-started journal books, me and words and feelings that have to come out.
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.
Tonight at a funeral the chaplain told us to breathe through the chaos, and in that breath to know peace, and know god. Tonight I learned how uncle made the best brownies, cut precisely with measuring stick in hand, each one perfect and delicious. I learned about his zigzag life, how it was sacred and desecrated and complicated all at the same time. How much he loved, and was loved, and how he drove his family crazy. How much he called them all—it was often. Bless you, love you, was his refrain. Bless you, Uncle. So many know they were loved by you, what a gift.
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.
last night we had a reunion of our hālau
we sang and danced and remembered with our bodies.
we noticed how much older we have become,
we marveled at how young we still seem,
even Masumi-san, so beautiful at 86 years old.
her mind remembers every dance, even if her knees have forgotten how.
in the fullness of the evening
in the lack of sleep that comes from
so much aloha this weekend
in the tears that come
to celebrate the life of Uncle (and Aunty!)
in the wind that beats at my window
as I struggle to get out these words,
I am a poet.
Aunty Pua said: “What we do in circle is NOT talk story; it is not chatting, icebreakers, not FUN, it IS ceremony. I’m asking you to come to a sacred space, create sacred space and share sacred information with each other in the way that you share your story. Human beings need ceremony. They need to pause. Human beings need to be in sacred spaces. It doesn’t need to be complicated. You need to be able to do it when a circle is needed. In a circle of chairs, it signifies that everyone has a place in the community, and this chair is my place. It is here that I can actually experience belonging to this. Prayers can be difficult, we all come to them in our own way, it can be difficult to hear what is being said. Poetry is a way of saying important sacred things in a small amount of words. It will hold that shape forever. You can go back to it over and over and over again. Sometimes you need to be able to say something about who you are.” —Aunty Pua, June 23, 2021 | Kupu Session 1
In which circle is your chair placed? What words will find their way into your poem? What do you need to say about who you are?
Aunty Pua would have us read a beautiful poem called “I Come From a Place” by her beloved friend and fellow rascal Aunty Ho‘oipo DeCambra, and “How to be a Poet” by Wendell Berry, and then write our own poem. Write a poem?! folks cried incredulously, but they did it. And after we each read our poem in the circle, she delighted in our writing. And she made us all say: “I am a poet.”
In a world of chaos, may you breathe peace and find poetry wherever you go.
Sunset at West Beach taken 1/12/25