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I want to read two
poems about poets.

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First was a teacher,
John Berryman,

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and the poem is called Berryman.

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I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war

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as we then called
the Second World War.

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Don't lose your
arrogance yet he said.

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You can do that
when you're older.

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Lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity.

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Just one time he
suggested changing

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the usual order of the same
words in a line of verse.

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Why point out a thing twice?

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He suggested I pray to the
muse, get down on my knees

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and pray right
there in the corner.

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And he said he
meant it literally.

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It was in the days before
the beard and the drink,

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but he was deep in
tides of his own

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through which he
sailed chin sideways

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and head tilted like
a tacking sloop.

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He was far older than the
dates allowed for, much older

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than I was.

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He was in his 30s.

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He snapped down his
nose with an accent

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I think he had
affected in England.

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As for publishing, he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection

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slips.

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His lips and the bones
of his long fingers

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trembled with the vehemence
of his views about poetry.

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He said the great
presence that permitted

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everything and transmuted
it in poetry was passion.

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Passion was genius.

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And he praised
movement and invention.

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I had hardly begun to read.

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I asked how can you ever
be sure that what you write

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is really any good at all?

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And he said you can't.

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You can't.

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You can never be sure.

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You die without knowing
whether anything you wrote

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was any good.

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If you have to be
sure, don't write.

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