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Poem: “How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry 

Statement of the Whole: How do you find the right environment that promotes good learning?  Is there just one type of such place?  Does the place learning occurs matter any more or less than what is learned?  The Backporch boys pursue these questions and others in an extended meditation on the poem they begin the episode with.  As Berry put it, “Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it.   Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”