HOW TO BE A POET // Wendell Berry 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. 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. Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it.…

Poetry requires something of us. It isn’t unintelligible. But it isn’t always easy, either. Often, it insists on patience; it pushes us toward a second or third reading. Poems are distilled stories — they’re full of potent imagery with little context, ideas without an excess of explanation. -Nneka McGuire

“While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems [themselves] a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.” Rothko died on this day in 1970. Rest in peace, Mark.