A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

by Wendell Berry

Berry’s Sabbath Poems embrace much that is elemental to human life―beauty, death, peace, and hope. In his preface, Berry writes about the growing audience for public poetry readings. While he sees poetry in the public eye as a good thing, Berry asks us to recognize the private life of the poem. These Sabbath Poems were written "in silence, in solitude, and mainly out of doors," and tell us about "moments when heart and mind are open and aware." Wendell Berry is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of the truths revealed.

Genres: Poetry, Nature, Faith, Nonfiction, Christian, Spirituality, Christianity

216 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1998

About the author

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the last volume of poetry I discussed with my father before he died. I wish I could call him on the phone to discuss it now. When I went home for the funeral, I claimed his copy from one of his many bookshelves. It will sit next to mine now. There are few better legacies a father could leave to his child than the love of books and poetry in particular.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't always "get" poetry, but many of these spoke to me. Here is one that I read over and over again:

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and calls it good.


And this one still runs through my head periodically:

Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet, but first
you must have the quiet.


Reading these poems is like taking a deep cleansing breath.

[ladydusk]

This book has been in my bathroom for years - 5? 10? I don't know, it has been a while. I would read an occasional poem here and there, but have been making a more concerted effort to do so in 2020. No star rating because 1) it has been too long and 2) poetry is not my strong reading suit so it wouldn't be fair. I'm trying to learn, though.

I enjoyed reading many of these. The trees, the birds, the place Berry writes about even the people are real and are pictured for us in wholeness. I'm no agrarian; despite that many things he contemplates ring true. Some I simply didn't understand.

I suspect I should re-read them all - I've folded down pages of particular ones that I'll copy into my poetry collection book.

[Jen H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book that awakened in you a love for the continuity of the seasons and their relationship to one another, inspired a careful appreciation for the passage of time, and quietly acknowledged the interrelationship between light and death? This book of poems from the well-known gentleman farmer, Wendell Berry, did all of this and more for me, and I highly recommend it to you.

The formatting of the book, by years written, contributed to the overall effectiveness of this book for me. I found myself returning time and again to what was happening in my own life each year, comparing and contrasting my own experiences with those of Mr. Berry, being inspired by his economy of words and his connectivity of worlds.

And, of course, the trees he writes about and from which the title of this book is taken, went a long way toward making this girl raised among trees feel at home within the covers of this book. Trees are the sentinels of time, and as such have much to teach us if we set our ears to listen, our eyes to see, and our hearts to embrace.

[Kyle H · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are some of the most beautiful words and thoughts I’ve come to know in my 27 years of life. Wendell is an absolute gift and his writing never ceases to amaze me. Highly recommend to those that like poetry and those that don’t.

[Kendalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading these sabbath poems on the Sabbath for the past few weeks and it has started what I hope will be a tradition of reading religious poetry to make my Sabbath more about Him. Wendell Berry never disappoints me. These were so beautiful. Here's one I loved in particular:

Thrush song, stream song, holy love
That flows through earthly forms and folds,
The song of Heaven’s Sabbath fleshed
In throat and ear, in stream and stone,
A grace living here as we live,
Move my mind now to that which holds
Things as they change.
The warmth has come.
The doors have opened. Flower and song
Embroider ground and air, lead me
Beside the healing field that waits;
Growth, death, and a restoring form
Of human use will make it well.
But I go on, beyond, higher
In the hill’s fold, forget the time
I come from and go to, recall
This grove left out of all account,
A place enclosed in song.
Design
Now falls from thought. I go amazed
Into the maze of a design
That mind can follow but not know,
Apparent, plain, and yet unknown,
The outline lost in earth and sky.
What form wakens and rumples this?
Be still. A man who seems to be
A gardener rises out of the ground,
Stands like a tree, shakes off the dark,
The bluebells opening at his feet,
The light a figured cloth of song.

[Sarah Fowler Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenally beautiful and poignant, restless and restful, longing and resolution.

[David Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I remember the leaves falling
and then the snow, and again
the small flowers rising up
out of dead leaves, the mosses
green again by the flowing water,
and the water thrush’s nest
under the root of a strong tree.
I said, I will grieve no more
for death, for what is death to me
who have seen thy returns, O
Lord of love, who in the false are true.”

I’ve been slowly working through this book for about four years, since my friend Kyle gifted it to me on my 18th birthday. More than ever the world Wendell Berry lives in, or at times longs for, is all that I want from this world, and all that this world is often not.

[Annalise Kraines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendell Berry is easily one of the sweetest poets I know. His work is humble yet extravagant. I read all of these poems out loud to myself in the quiet of my room, and they ministered to my soul. Side note: if you're not reading poetry out loud to yourself, wyd? I recommend you try it. These poems were written over a period of 20 years, and it was fascinating to see Berry's craft change and grow and improve. The poems get stronger as the collection goes on. I didn't want it to end. And also I need to take a pencil to my copy and underline EVERYTHING.

[Anna]

“I would not have been a poet /
except that I have been in love /
alive in this mortal world.”

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Berry's poems are fraught with the imagery of a planet and a livelihood under siege by modern society. However, they are also filled with moments of light and love for others and for the divine. Some of these poems leap from the page into your heart and mind, others require a deeper introspection but are worthy of it. If you can't find something to like, try reading it again.

[Davis Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry isn't really Berry's strong suit, and many of these are underwhelming from a technical aspect. Clearly he hasn't a top-notch ear for meter and prosody (but then again, neither have I). The style is so indebted to Frost that it almost makes me hesitate. But I truly think Berry is one of our Great Men, and there are some real gems of wisdom in here. From 1991 onward, the poems get more accomplished, more thoughtful, and more lyrical; and occasionally a line will hit you right in the soul. It's fascinating to see both the continuity and the development of his style throughout twenty years as he reacts to current events, and I like the choice not to assign titles to most of the poems. A good collection to keep on your bedside for some snatches of beauty before you close your eyes.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read somewhere that Wendell Berry thinks of himself as an “amateur poet.” I haven’t heard anything so ridiculously funny in a while. And I am afraid his politics and decision to be a full time farmer instead of a university professor might have suppressed the best poetry that was ever written. Where are the accolades? This poetry is so beautiful, accessible, important, spiritual, realistic, holy, religious, non religious, lyrical, everything. The poems are technically and lyrically brilliant, and they can bring tears and laughter in the same poem. How can we ask anything more of art than to make us feel deeply? This volume collects all his quiet, personal Sabbath poems, and it is a phenomenal sweep of his life.

He has won a Poetry prize and a National Humanities Medal; I want more. I want the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Nobel Peace Prize, and let’s throw in a Grammy while we are at it. He is the definition of an American hero, as defined other than militarily. He has resisted modernity, and remained true to the land and small farm ownership, and I think those who judge literary prizes trivialize his contribution. It isn’t dark or angsty or pessimistic enough to impress the powers that be. His voice is powerful though, and you will be changed by even a few of these poems.

Commence the beauty:

1979-I 
 
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

1979-II
The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways it cannot intend; 
is borne, preserved, and comprehended
by what it cannot comprehend. 

1980-IV
The frog with lichened back and golden thigh
Sits still, almost invisible
On leafed and lichened stem,
Invisibility
Its sign of being at home
There in its given place, and well.
The warbler with its quivering striped throat
Would live almost beyond my sight,
Almost beyond belief,
But for its double note–
Among high leaves a leaf,
At ease, at home in air and light.
And I, though woods and fields, through fallen days
Am passing to where I belong:
At home, at ease, and well.
In Sabbaths of this place
Almost invisible,
Toward which I go from song to song.

1982-I
Here where the dark-sourced stream brims up,
Reflecting daylight, making sound
In its stepped fall from cup to cup
Of tumbled rocks, singing its round

From cloud to sea to cloud, I climb
The deer road through the leafless trees
Under a wind that batters limb
On limb, still roaring as it has

Two nights and days, cold in slow spring.
But ancient song in a wild throat
Recalls itself and starts to sing
In storm-cleared light; and the bloodroot,

Twinleaf, the rue anemone
Among bare shadows rise, keep faith
With what they have been and will be
Again: frail stem and leaf, mere breath

Of white and starry bloom, each form
Recalling itself to its place
And time. Give thanks, for no windstorm
Or human wrong has altered this,

The forfeit Garden that recalls
Itself here, where both we and it
Belong; no act or thought rebels
In this brief Sabbath now, time fit

To be eternal. Such a bliss
Of bloom’s no ornament, but root
And light, a saving loveliness,
Starred firmament here underfoot

1982 — IV
Thrush song, stream song, holy love
That flows through earthly forms and folds,
The song of Heaven’s Sabbath fleshed
In throat and ear, in stream and stone,
A grace living here as we live,
Move my mind now to that which holds
Things as they change.
The warmth has come.
The doors have opened. Flower and song
Embroider ground and air, lead me
Beside the healing field that waits;
Growth, death, and a restoring form
Of human use will make it well.
But I go on, beyond, higher
In the hill’s fold, forget the time
I come from and go to, recall
This grove left out of all account,
A place enclosed in song.
Design
Now falls from thought. I go amazed
Into the maze of a design
That mind can follow but not know,
Apparent, plain, and yet unknown,
The outline lost in earth and sky.
What form wakens and rumples this?
Be still. A man who seems to be
A gardener rises out of the ground,
Stands like a tree, shakes off the dark,
The bluebells opening at his feet,
The light a figured cloth of song.

1982-VI
Out of disorder, then,
A little coherence, a pattern
Comes, like the steadying
Of a rhythm on a drum, melody
Coming to it from time
To time, waking over it,
As from a bird at dawn
Or nightfall, the long outline
Emerging through the momentary,
As the hill’s hard shoulder
Shows through trees
When the leaves fall.

The field finds its source
In the old forest, in the thicket
That returned to cover it,
In the dark wilderness of its soil,
In the dispensations of the sky,
In our time, in our minds—
The righting of what was done wrong.

Wrong was easy; gravity helped it.
Right is difficult and long.
In choosing what is difficult
We are free, the mind too
Making its little flight
Out from the shadow into the clear
In time between work and sleep.

There are two healings: nature’s,
And ours and nature’s. Nature’s
Will come in spite of us, after us,
Over the graves of its wasters, as it comes
To the forsaken fields. The healing
That is ours and nature’s will come
If we are willing, if we are patient,
If we know the way, if we will do the work.
My father’s father, whose namesake
You are, told my father this, he told me,
And I am telling you: we make
This healing, the land’s and ours:
It is our possibility. We may keep
This place, and be kept by it.
There is a mind of such an artistry
That grass will follow it,
And heal and hold, feed beasts
Who will feed us and feed the soil.

Though we invite, this healing comes
In answer to another voice than ours:
A strength not ours returns
Out of death beginning in our work.

Though the spring is late and cold,
Though uproar of greed
And malice shudders in the sky,
Pond, stream, and treetop raise
Their ancient songs;

The robin molds her mud nest
With her breast; the air
Is bright with breath
Of bloom, wise loveliness that asks
Nothing of the season but to be.

1982- VII
Our household for the time made right,
All right around us on the hill
For time and for this time, tonight,
Two kernels folded in one shell,

We're joined in sleep beyond desire
To one another and to time,
Whatever time will take or spare,
Forest, field, house, and hollow room

All joined to us, to darkness joined,
All barriers down, and we are borne
Darkly, by thoroughfares unsigned
Toward light we come in time to learn,

In faith no better sighted yet
Than when we plighted first by hope,
By vows more solemn than we thought
Ourselves to this combining sleep

A quarter century ago,
Lives given to each other and
To time, to lives we did not know
Already given, heart and hand.

Would I come to this time this way
Again, now that I know, confess
So much, knowing I cannot say
More now than then what will be? Yes.

1984-V
Estranged by distance, he relearns 
The way to quiet not his own, 
The light at rest on tree and stone,
The high leaves falling their turns,

Spiraling through the air made gold
By their slow fall. Bright on the ground, 
They wait their darkening, commend
To coming light the light they hold. 

His own long comedown from the air
Complete, safe home again, absence
Withdrawing from him tense by tense
In presence of the resting year.

Blessing and blessed in this result
Of times not blessed, now he has risen.
He walks in quiet beyond division
In surcease of his own tumult. 

1985-I
Not again in this flesh will I see
the old trees stand here as they did,
weighty creatures made of light, delight
of their making straight in them and well,
whatever blight our blindness was or made,
however thought or act might fail.

The burden of absence grows, and I pay
daily the grief I owe to love
for women and men, days and trees
I will not know again. Pray
for the world’s light thus borne away.
Pray for the little songs that wake and move.

For comfort as these lights depart,
recall again the angels of the thicket,
columbine aerial in the whelming tangle,
song drifting down, light rain, day
returning in song, the lordly Art
piecing out its humble way.

Though blindness may yet detonate in light,
ruining all, after all the years, great right
subsumed finally in paltry wrong,
what do we know? Still
the Presence that we come into with song
is here, shaping the seasons of His wild will.

1985-V
How long does it take to make the woods? 
As long as it takes to make the world. 
The woods is present as the world is, the presence
of all its past and of all its time to come. 
It is always finished, it is always being made, the act
of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction.
It is a part of eternity for its end and beginning
belong to the end and beginning of all things,
the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.

What is the way to the woods, how do you go there?
By climbing up through the six days’ field, 
kept in all the body’s years, the body’s 
sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through 
the narrow gate on the far side of that field 
where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way 
to the high, original standing of the trees. 
By coming into the shadow, the shadow
of the grace of the strait way’s ending, 
the shadow of the mercy of light. 

Why must the gate be narrow? 
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. 
To come into the woods you must leave behind 
the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes. 
You must come without weapon or tool, alone, 
expecting nothing, remembering nothing, 
into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf


1986-I
Slowly, slowly, they return
To the small woodland let alone:
Great trees, outspreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.

Patient as stars, they build in air
Tier after tier a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace
Of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,
Uprisings of their native ground,
Downcomings of the distant light;
They are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,
Their life's a benefaction made,
And is a benediction said
Over the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind, and we are pleased
To walk on radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised!

1987-III
And now the lowland grove is down, the trees
Fallen that had unearthly power to please
The earthly eye, and gave unearthly solace
To minds grown quiet in that quiet place.
To see them standing was to know a prayer
Prayed to the Holly Spirit in the air
By that same Spirit dwelling in the ground.
The wind in their high branches gave the sound 
Of air replying to that prayer. The rayed
Imperial light sang in the leaves it made. 

To live as mourner of a human friend
Is but to understand the common end
Told by the steady counting in the wrist.
For though the absent friend is mourned and missed
As every pulse, it is a human loss
In human time made well; our grief will bless
At last the dear lost flesh and breath; it will
Grow quiet as the body in the hill.

To live to mourn an ancient woodland, known
Always, loved with an old love handed down,
That is a grief that will outlast the griever,
Grief as landmark, grief as a wearing river
That in its passing stays, biding in rhyme
Of year with year, time with returning time,
As though beyond the grave the soul will wait 
In long unrest the shaping of the light
In branch and bole through centuries that prepare
This ground to pray again its finest prayer 

1990- V
Sleep is the prayer the body prays,
Breathing in unthought faith the Breath
That throughout our worry-wearied days
Preserves our rest, and is our truth. 

1991-X
Loving you has taught me the infinite
longing of the self to be given away
and the great difficulty of that entire
giving, for in love to give is to receive
and then there is yet more to give;
and others have been born of our giving
to whom the self, greatened by gifts,
must be given, and by that giving
be increased, until, self-burdened,
the self, staggering upward in years,
in fear, hope, love, and sorrow,
imagines, rising like a moon,
a pale moon risen in daylight
over the dark woods, the Self
whose gift we and all others are,
the self that is by definition given

1993-IV
Hate has no world.
The people of hate must try 
To possess the world of love,
For it is the only world;
It is Heaven and Earth.
But as lonely, eager hate
Possesses it, it disappears;
It never did exist,
And hate must seek another
World that love has made. 

1994-II
Finally will it not be enough,
After much living, after
Much love, after much dying
Of those you have loved,
To sit on the porch near sundown
With your eyes simply open, 
Watching the wind shape the clouds
Into the shape of clouds? 

Even then you will remember 
The history of love, shaped
In the shapes of flesh, everchanging
As the clouds that pass, the blessed
Yearning of body for body, 
Unending light.
You will remember, watching 
The clouds, the future of love. 

1994-VII
I would not have been a poet
 except that I have been in love
 alive in this mortal world, 
 or an essayist except that I 
 have been bewildered and afraid,
 or a storyteller had I not heard
 stories passing to me through the air,
 or a writer at all except 
 I have been wakeful at night
 and words have come to me
 out of their deep caves
 needing to be remembered.
 But on the days I am lucky
 or blessed, I am silent.
 I go into the one body
 that two make in making marriage
 that for all our trying, all
 our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
 has no tongue. Or I give myself
 to gravity, light, and air
 and am carried back
 to solitary work in fields
 and woods, where my hands
 rest upon a world unnamed, 
 complete, unanswerable, and final
 as our daily bread and meat. 
 The way of love leads all ways 
 to life beyond words, silent
 and secret. To serve that triumph
 I have done all the rest.


1997-IV
"You see," my mother said, and laughed,
knowing I knew the passage
she was remembering," finally you lose
everything." She had lost
parents, husband, and friends, youth,
health, most comforts, many hopes.

Deaf, asleep in her chair, awakened
by a hand's touch, she would look up
and smile in welcome as quiet
as if she had seen us coming.

She watched, curious and affectionate,
the sparrows, titmice, and chickadees
she fed at her kitchen window-
where did they come from, where
did they go? No matter.
They came and went as freely as
in the time of her old age
her children came and went,
uncaptured, but fed.

And I, walking in the first spring
of her absence, know again
her inextinguishable delight:
the wild bluebells, the yellow
celandine, violets purple
and white, twinleaf, bloodroot,
larkspur, the rue anemone
light, light under the big trees,
and overhead the redbud blooming,
the redbird singing,
the oak leaves like flowers still
unfolding, and the blue sky."

1997 VII
There is a day
when the road neither 
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.

[Emily Magnus · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have officially broken the curse of the 3-star ratings in the past books. DARE I even say this deserved 5 lil golden sparkles. My phone camera roll is now dispersed with seemingly every other page of these poems. Our guy Berry has a way of putting encapsulating nature, relationships and work that truly felt like a breathe of fresh air. The preface of this book set the tone saying "these poems were written in silence, in solitude, mainly out of doors. A reader will like them best, I think, who reads them in similar circumstances- at least in a quiet room". With that being said, these poems felt like respites to my days. Wendell Berry made me want to stop drop and become a farmer tbh with his love for the land. He once described the Sabbath economy "In which all thought is song, All labor is dance." Can't you just picture miniature disco balls of dance and song around our days of rest?!

POTB (poem of the book) (hard to choose tbh so here is a part of one that I wrote down):

"For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go-
Into a boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The maker comes to His work."

Also new life motto (because everyone should be given flowers)
"Flowers- some for your self
And some to give away."

[Julia LaRue · Rating 5 out of 5]

still not quite sure how I’m supposed to review poetry, but this was great. 10/10. thx Wendell Berry for writing so beautifully & for sharing it with the world.

notable lines!!!
pg 8: “their whole pleasure was to be what He made them.”
pg 14: “workday and sabbath live together in one place. though mortal, incomplete, that harmony is our one possibility of peace.”
pg 111: “I knew that I was present in the long age of the passing world - in which I once was not, now am, and will not be. I rested in a keeping not my own.”
pg 182: “I would not have been a poet except that I have been in love, alive in this mortal world.”

&& my favorite!!!
pg 77: “What is the way to the woods (Heaven), how do you go there? By climbing up through the six days’ field, kept in all the body’s years - the body’s sorrow, weariness, and joy. Why must the gate be narrow? Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. To come in among these trees you must leave behind the six days’ world, all of it.”

[Mary Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked more of the poems in the second half than the first.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

1991, V:
The seed is in the ground.
Now we may rest in hope
While darkness does its work.

They say words make worlds, and Berry's poetry paints a vision of the natural world in which every tree and leaf sings the glory of God, where no space is unable to be sanctified by grace, no relationship is irredeemable, and every life is given as gift. Reading Berry's Sabbath poems reminds me to be still and rest - to let go of the fretfulness and frenzy of the modern world and enter into the quiet - and, ultimately, to remember that my life is given by a maker who desires my good.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do I like poetry?
I think so.
Some of these poems were absolutely amazing...some were not (to me).
I appreciate the slowness this poetry encouraged.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first discovered Wendell Berry when as an undergraduate at Southeastern University I recieved his poem "How to Be A Poet (to remind myself)" in my school mailbox as a gift from my advisor's wife, as I had recently presented Billy Collins to her freshmen composistion class. The poem has been on my bathroom mirror ever since, reminding me every morning of the virtues of silence, meditation, tranquility, and being present to ones surroundings. His poems seem to reflect his quest to practice these virtues in all that he does. As a person of faith, I've found his poetry to be highly edifying and uplifting, challenging me to practice peace through the worship of contemplation.

[Stephen Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of Berry's poetry that I have picked up. I was very pleased with what I found. I don't feel that I can rant and rave about this book not because what I found was of poor quality, but because Berry installs a sense of peace and tearfulness that epitomizes the meaning of the Sabbath. His poems are never fast-moving or action-packed; they are appreciative, observant, transcendent, and loving. I was very pleased with this collection. Mostly set around his life in nature and farm work, some allusions were lost on this city-dweller, but the emotive response still rang true. Highly recommended.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

" I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world..." (1994, #VII)
In this collection of beautiful poetry, Wendell Berry reminds us of what is right and good in this world. While reading many of these poems, I was reminded of childhood days spent on my grandmother's small farm in the Catskills and the beauty that surrounded me and the peace I felt walking through fields and woods. These poems have been my companion through the Advent and Christmas seasons and I will return to them in the coming year.

[Alena Guggemos · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say about Wendell Berry? His writing, along with that of Thoreau, is about as close as I come to reading the bible. This books sits on my night stand and I often turn to it in the evening to quiet my mind or in the morning to provide perspective. Every poem is a prayer.

[Lindsey]

Wendell Berry makes me proud to be from KY.

[Ben DeVries · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poetry really grew on me as I read through it. Many poignant reflections in it, which call my heart back to a simpler and more noble way of life ...

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful! I could always be reading this book, circling back to the beginning as soon as I finished the last page, and continue to find surprises in the words and images and rhythms.

[Gary Grimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read that allowed me to relax as I read it. I am t usually a fan of poetry but very much enjoyed reading this book. Let me look at divine in a different way.

[Justin Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible volume of poetry by the brilliant farmer and poet Wendell Berry.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

salt of the earth, spirit of the sky

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ugh! This book will stand firmly in the lineup of my favorite books of all time. I imagine this will be one I come back to again, and maybe again and again.

I happened upon this book while perusing a poetry section in a small-town coffee shop library. I brought it to my table, opened it up, and began reading while I waited for my guest to arrive. I had only minutes with it; but in those minutes, a smile became plastered on my face and my heart did leaps. You know the feeling when you meet a book that seems to speak your language, or one that instantly feels like a best friend, or one that opens a dusty room in your heart? This was all of that for me from the moment I opened its pages.

I had a one & a half years journey with this book and the evening I finished it, I wrote a thank you note to Berry:

“Thank you, Wendell Berry, for sitting with me in the waiting times, and giving language to them. Thank you for taking me to the countryside and the fields when I was away in the city, or when my mind was a hundred miles elsewhere. Thank you for teaching me to observe, sit, walk really slowly, sabbath, touch the earth. Thank you for speaking of love — not shying away from the topic, but speaking candidly with us strangers about intimacies. Thank you for speaking of death — of aging bodies and changing times and long-lived years. You have opened up to me a world (that is also mine) which I have hardly seen or touched — a world youth cannot go. Thank you for showing me how to hold and honor a person’s life after they pass, through memory and record. (You remind me of my grandmother.) Thank you for speaking of what is important in life, and what is not. Thank you for speaking of God and writing of God. Thank you for your sabbath walks, and your company on my own.”


This can be a book that shapes you — your priorities, your system of beliefs, your scope of vision, your worldview — but only in its subtle, very personal way. This was my introduction into Wendell Berry, and I’m so excited to read more.

[Lea Woods · Rating 3 out of 5]

Am I the only person who just isn’t a huge Wendell Berry fan?!
1. Rhyming poetry is hard for me to appreciate-any poetry that is too regimented just feels antiquated to me. I hate constraints-I think that’s because something has to laid down as a sacrifice to maintain such rigid control—and I find that is almost always the imagery that suffers. I never want imagery to suffer. Let the language, the meter, the rhyme slip if it
must, but for the love of God, let the imagery live.

2. I’m a devotee of the natural, unhurried, timeless world, just like Berry. It takes very little to move me. His meditations seem to be terrified of the “deep end.” He wades around in the shallows, he may even start swimming toward the drop-off- but he always seems to hurry back to safety once his feet can’t touch bottom. I shake this book and say into the pages “Do it! Just dive in,” but his hesitation awakens my hesitation. I can’t find the depth here. Even when talking about death there’s a certain distance and sterility that just kill me. Wendell, I know you feel it. I know you have watered the roots of your beloved trees with tears-dive into it. Tell me. Show me. It doesn’t have to be neat, or lyrical, it doesn’t have to rhyme. Just say it, the ugly truth of it, the simplest way you know how.

3. His essays are better than his poems, in my opinion.