Thirteen new stories of the Port William membership spanning the decades from World War II to the present Berry, Wendell. "The Responsibility of the Poet." What Are People For? New York: North Point, 1990. p.89. New York Times Book Review, September 25, 1977; December 20, 1981; December 18, 1983, pp. 8, 16; November 24, 1985, pp. 28-29; April 13, 1986, p. 22; September 27, 1987, p. 30; January 1, 1989, p. 14; November 15, 1992, p. 20; October 17, 1993. He records the work of caring for the healing of his sloping lands. He writes in the introduction of having hoped the pasture would revert to forest, but rather his ewes ate the tree saplings. Instead, he tends the pasture in 2005, X “Mowing the hillside pasture–where.” He describes the Queen Anne’s lace, the milkweeds, butterflies, voles, and the contours of the healing slopes for which “He sweats and gives thanks.” In the next poem he speaks of imparting these experiences to his grandson, remembering when he was the young boy waving to an old workman in a pasture. For a more general overview of life in Port William, readers can immerse themselves in That Distant Land: The Collected Stories of Wendell Berry. The stories, which include four not previously published, span a century in the life of the fictional farming community. The locale connects its diverse inhabitants—man, woman, farmer, teacher, lawyer, each struggling in his or her own way to maintain the simple lifestyle of times almost gone by. “Berry is an American treasure,” wrote Ann H. Fisher in Library Journal review of the collection. A contributor to Publishers Weekly observed that the author’s “feel for the inner lives of his quirky rural characters makes for many memorable portraits.”

Staff (April 29, 2014). "2014 Festival of Faiths presents 'Sacred Earth Sacred Self' May 13-18". Louisville Future . Retrieved June 14, 2020. It is perhaps Berry’s essays that have brought him the greatest broad readership. In one of his most popular early collections, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, he argues that agriculture is the foundation of America’s greater culture. He makes a strong case against the U.S. government’s agricultural policy, which promotes practices leading to overproduction, pollution, and soil erosion. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Leon V. Driskell termed The Unsettling of America“an apocalyptic book that places in bold relief the ecological and environmental problems of the American nation.” An arresting collection of contemporary fiction at its best, these stories explore a vast range of subjects, from love and deception to war and the insidious power of class distinctions. However clearly spoken, in voices sophisticated, cunning, or na ve, here is fiction that consistently defies our expectations. Selected from thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines, the twenty prize winning stories are accompanied by essays from each of the three eminent jurors on which stories they judged the best, and observations from all twenty prizewinners on what inspired them. Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”On May 22, 2009, Berry, at a listening session in Louisville, spoke against the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). [25] He said, "If you impose this program on the small farmers, who are already overburdened, you're going to have to send the police for me. I'm 75 years old. I've about completed my responsibilities to my family. I'll lose very little in going to jail in opposition to your program – and I'll have to do it. Because I will be, in every way that I can conceive of, a non-cooperator." [26] Wendell Berry And Preparing Students For "Good Work" ". TeachThought. August 5, 2015 . Retrieved January 30, 2019. Center for Southern Studies to Award Sidney Lanier Prize to Wendell Berry". Mercer News. February 1, 2016. Wendell Berry Makes Public Statement on the Death Penalty". Danzig U.S.A. January 29, 2009 . Retrieved August 22, 2015. I was surprised by the number of poems remembering friends who have died and reflecting on his own advancing years. In 2005, VII, Berry makes an observation that would find many of us nodding our heads in agreement: “I know I am getting old and I say so/but I don’t think of myself as an old man./I think of myself as a young man/with unforeseen debilities.”

A setting of section VIII of "Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer" from Farming: A Hand Book (1970). Video [159] Triggs, Jeffery A. (1988). "Moving the Dark to Wholeness: The Elegies of Wendell Berry". The Literary Review. 31 (3): 279–292. doi: 10.7282/T3QZ2CQ0. ISSN 0024-4589.

We learn in the preface and introduction to these poems that they were composed by Wendell Berry during his Sabbaths, which he observed each Sunday. He tells us that many of them were written out of doors. Some of the poems even record Berry reclining in the woods near his home and falling asleep. Some, as the introductory poem suggests, were written looking out the window from his study, looking down the sloping property that is his farm to the river that flows into the Ohio. We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to 'win the hearts and minds of the people' by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. . . . I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war. [13] Steele, Melanie (April 28, 2015). "Agricultural Philosophy: Wendell Berry". Indie Farmer . Retrieved January 31, 2019. The American Boychoir; James Litton, Conductor, Glen Velez, percussion. Other recording with The Ooolites (1997). These are all relatively short poems. They're meditative and Thoreau-like. They're pastoral, nature-conscious, and, as you might expect, observant of every personality of the seasons, aware of every type of wingbeat and footpad of life there. These poems are always sensitive to the passage of time, and they're modest and grateful for the world. In recent years the poems have become more spiritual. Thinking about Berry's awareness of and ability to articulate the wholeness of existence, it's no wonder he's been compared to the great Roman poet Horace.

Christianity Today, 15 November 2006 "Imagining a Different Way to Live" ". November 15, 2006. The church and all of our institutions have failed to oppose the destruction of the world.

Berry, Wendell (June 13, 2013). "The Commerce of Violence". Progressive.org . Retrieved January 31, 2019. Farmer, activist, economist, seer: why Wendell Berry is the modern-day Thoreau". newstatesman.com. January 28, 2017 . Retrieved January 31, 2019. If you are not already a fan of this poet, I suggest trying one of his individual poetry titles first, such as "Farming: A Handbook," and selecting this full collection only if you are, like I hope to be, a Wendell Berry completist.