“he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and inventionI 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’tyou 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”
From WS Merwin’s Berryman
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This is so true.