The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982

by Wendell Berry

• ISBN13: 9780865471979
• ISBN10: 0865471975
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1987-04-01
• Publisher: North Point Pr

Summary

A longtime spokesman for conservation, common sense, and sustainable agriculture, Wendell Berry writes eloquently in several styles and methods. Among other literary forms, he is a poet of great clarity and sureness. His love of language and his care for its music are matched only by his fidelity to the subjects he has written of during his first twenty-five years of work: land and nature, the family and community, tradition as the groundwork for life and culture. His graceful elegies sit easily alongside lyrics of humor and biting satire. Husbandman and husband, philosopher and Mad Farmer, he writes of values that endure, of earthy truths and universal imagery. His vision is one of hope and memory, of determination and faithfulness. For this far-reaching yet portable volume, Berry has chosen nearly two hundred poems from his previous eight collections.

Author Biography

Wendell Berry is a Kentuckian who wrote and taught in California and New York before returning to the Kentucky River region where he has lived for two decades, writing and farming on seventy-five acres in Henry County. Mr. Berry has emerged as an eloquent spokesman for conservation, common sense, and sustainable agriculture, topics he has pursued in The Unsettling of America, The Gift of Good Land, and Meeting the Expectations of the Land, which he co-edited with agricultural researcher Wes Jackson and conservationist Bruce Colman. He has also written of the Kentucky River country in his novels, including Nathan Coulter and A Place on Earth, and in the short story collection The Wild Birds. Among his collections of literary essays is Standing by Words, an exploration of language as both a source of confusion and a means to understanding. North Point Press has also published Mr. Berry's collections of poetry, A Part and The Wheel, and his collection of essays, Home Economics: Eighteen Essays.

Table of Contents

The Broken Ground (1964)
Elegy	p. 3
Observance	p. 5
Boone	p. 7
Green and White	p. 11
A Man Walking and Singing	p. 11
The Companions	p. 14
The Aristocracy	p. 15
The Bird Killer	p. 16
An Architecture	p. 16
Canticle	p. 17
Sparrow	p. 17
A Music	p. 18
To Go By Singing	p. 19
The Wild	p. 19
May Song	p. 20
The Fear of Darkness	p. 21
The Plan	p. 22
The Guest	p. 23
The Thief	p. 24
The Broken Ground	p. 25
Findings (1969)
The Design of a House	p. 29
The Handing Down	p. 35
Three Elegiac Poems	p. 49
Openings (1968)
The Thought of Something Else	p. 55
My Great-Grandfather's Slaves	p. 56
October 10	p. 57
The Snake	p. 58
The Cold	p. 59
To My Children, Fearing for Them	p. 59
The Winter Rain	p. 60
March Snow	p. 61
April Woods: Morning	p. 61
The Finches	p. 61
The Porch over the River	p. 62
Before Dark	p. 63
The Dream	p. 64
The Sycamore	p. 65
The Meadow	p. 66
Against the War in Vietnam	p. 66
Dark with Power	p. 67
In Memory: Stuart Egnal	p. 67
The Want of Peace	p. 68
The Peace of Wild Things	p. 69
Grace	p. 69
To Think of the Life of a Man	p. 70
Marriage	p. 70
Do Not Be Ashamed	p. 71
Window Poems	p. 72
To a Siberian Woodsman	p. 95
A Discipline	p. 98
A Poem of Thanks	p. 99
Envoy	p. 99
Farming: A Hand Book (1970)
The Man Born to Farming	p. 103
The Stones	p. 103
The Supplanting	p. 104
Sowing	p. 104
The Familiar	p. 105
The Farmer among the Tombs	p. 105
For the Rebuilding of a House	p. 105
The Springs	p. 106
Rain	p. 106
Sleep	p. 107
To Know the Dark	p. 107
Winter Night Poem for Mary	p. 107
Winter Nightfall	p. 108
February 2, 1968	p. 108
March 22, 1968	p. 108
The Morning's News	p. 109
Enriching the Earth	p. 110
A Wet Time	p. 111
The Silence	p. 111
In This World	p. 112
The New Roof	p. 112
A Praise	p. 113
On the Hill Late at Night	p. 113
The Seeds	p. 114
The Wish to Be Generous	p. 114
Air and Fire	p. 114
The Lilies	p. 115
Independence Day	p. 116
A Standing Ground	p. 116
Song in a Year of Catastrophe	p. 117
The Current	p. 119
The Mad Farmer Revolution	p. 119
The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer	p. 121
The Farmer and the Sea	p. 122
Earth and Fire	p. 122
The Mad Farmer in the City	p. 123
The Birth	p. 124
Awake at Night	p. 128
Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer	p. 129
The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer	p. 132
Meditation in the Spring Rain	p. 135
The Grandmother	p. 137
The Heron	p. 137
September 2, 1969	p. 138
The Farmer, Speaking of Monuments	p. 139
The Sorrel Filly	p. 139
To the Unseeable Animal	p. 140
The Country of Marriage (1973)
The Old Elm Tree by the River	p. 145
Poem	p. 145
Breaking	p. 146
The Country of Marriage	p. 146
Prayer after Eating	p. 148
Her First Calf	p. 149
Kentucky River Junction	p. 149
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front	p. 151
A Marriage, an Elegy	p. 152
The Arrival	p. 153
A Song Sparrow Singing in the Fall	p. 153
The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment	p. 153
Planting Trees	p. 155
The Wild Geese	p. 155
The Silence	p. 156
Anger against Beasts	p. 157
At a Country Funeral	p. 158
The Recognition	p. 159
Planting Crocuses	p. 160
Praise	p. 160
The Gathering	p. 161
A Homecoming	p. 162
The Mad Farmer's Love Song	p. 162
Testament	p. 163
The Clear Days	p. 165
Song	p. 166
Poem for J.	p. 166
The Long Hunter	p. 167
An Anniversary	p. 168
Clearing (1977)
History	p. 173
Where	p. 175
The Clearing	p. 180
Work Song	p. 187
From the Crest	p. 189
A Part (1980)
Stay Home	p. 199
To Gary Snyder	p. 199
For the Hog Killing	p. 200
Goods	p. 200
The Adze	p. 200
The Cold Pane	p. 201
Falling Asleep	p. 201
A Purification	p. 201
A Dance	p. 202
The Fear of Love	p. 203
Seventeen Years	p. 203
To What Listens	p. 204
Woods	p. 205
The Lilies	p. 205
Forty Years	p. 206
A Meeting	p. 206
Another Descent	p. 206
Below	p. 207
The Star	p. 207
The Hidden Singer	p. 207
The Necessity of Faith	p. 208
To the Holy Spirit	p. 209
Ripening	p. 209
The Way of Pain	p. 210
We Who Prayed and Wept	p. 211
Grief	p. 211
Fall	p. 212
An Autumn Burning	p. 212
A Warning to My Readers	p. 213
Creation Myth	p. 213
The First	p. 215
Walking on the River Ice	p. 215
Throwing Away the Mail	p. 215
Except	p. 216
For the Future	p. 216
Traveling at Home	p. 216
July, 1773	p. 217
The Slip	p. 224
Horses	p. 225
The Wheel (1982)
Requiem	p. 233
Elegy	p. 234
Rising	p. 241
Desolation	p. 245
The Strait	p. 245
The Law That Marries All Things	p. 247
Setting Out	p. 248
Song (1)	p. 248
From the Distance	p. 249
Letter	p. 251
Returning	p. 252
To Tanya at Christmas	p. 252
Song (2)	p. 253
The River Bridged and Forgot	p. 255
The Gift of Gravity	p. 257
Song (3)	p. 261
The Wheel	p. 261
The Dance	p. 262
Passing the Strait	p. 263
Our Children, Coming of Age	p. 264
Song (4)	p. 264
In Rain	p. 267
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