Hitting the spot

In his essay, "The Specialization of Poetry," Wendell Berry examines the way 20th Century poets developed inner worlds of words, often to the exclusion of experiencing an active life outside themselves. He quotes one of those poetic guys: "I have the feeling that I am a metaphor for my own being."

While he bemoans this state of affairs, Berry, a poet himself, appreciates many contributions of the specialized poets. He simply notes that we have to think in broader terms, no matter what we're doing with our talents, jobs, livelihoods.

I love best what he says here. It grabs me where I exist these days, and I've thought along somewhat similar lines many times, but have lacked Mr. Wendell's eloquence:

Perhaps the time has come to say that there is, in reality, no such choice as Yeats's "Perfection of life, or of the work." The division implied by this proposed choice is not only destructive; it is based upon a shallow understanding of the relation between work and life. The conflicts of life and work, like those of rest and work, would ideally be resolved in balance: enough of each. In practice, however, they probably can be resolved (if that is the word) only in tension, in a principled unwillingness to let go of either, or to sacrifice either to the other. But it is a necessary tension, the grief in it both inescapable and necessary.