Berryman

Was reminded today of the stunning poem, Berryman, by the Pulitzer Prize & National Book Award winning poet, W.S. Merwin. Merwin was a seventeen-year-old freshman enrolled in John Berryman’s creative writing class at Princeton. A lifetime bond was forged.

It’s incredible advice to any artist. I encourage you to read it again and again. The last two verses especially resonate.

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

Stop wondering. Go make your art.