Creativity II

This emerging Spring Saturday morning :

Art is long, life is short … write what will stop your breath if you don't write. – attributed to Grace Paley.

“Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own heart.” ―Ryokan

Next: Below are the final 2 stanzas of Merwin's reflections on writing advice received from his mentor, John Berryman. I pass them along as a universal reminder for all of us engaged in the creative forces of the Watercoure Way and the lovely muses riding its waves to and through us.

Berryman

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 – W.S. Merwin, “Berryman,” in Migration: New & Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press; First Edition (September 1, 2007).

And, speaking of creatives: two birthday reminders – Poet Naomi Shihab Nye is celebrating her 70th birthday (1952, St. Louis); and Jack Kerouac would be 100 years old today (1922, Lowell, Mass.).