There’s an oft-quoted idea about keeping fresh eyes, staying a beginner and using that as a way to explore, see new possibilities, make new connections, no matter what your field or art. Wendell Berry brings this up at the end of his poem, “To Hayden Carruth“, seen today on The Writer’s Almanac. More poems by Berry can be found at the Poetry Foundation including this one, How To Be a Poet.
What shall
I say? I greet you at the beginning of a great career?
No. I greet you at the beginning, for we are
either beginning or we are dead. And let us have
no careers, lest one day we be found dead in them.
I greet you at the beginning that you have made
authentically in your art, again and again.
It turns out that Hayden Carruth was a poet as well, and his work can be found at the Poetry Foundation too, see “Emergency Haying” or “Graves”
What do they find there? Hell,
I wouldn’t go look at the grave of
Shakespeare if it was just
down the street. I wouldn’t
look at—” And I stopped. I
was about to say the grave of God
until I realized I’m looking at it
all the time….
