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Openings
In "Openings" Wendell Berry speaks as a citizen, farmer, husband, and father and as a man deeply concerned about the state of the nation. He writes both to celebrate the natural world and to warn of the destruction we inflict on it. He writes about our responsibilities to ourselves and to one another and about America's misuses of power. He writes, in poems that are tender and passionate, of love for his wife and of the pleasures and anxieties of parenthood. In a highly acclaimed extended sequence entitled "Window Poems" he weaves together all of his dominant themes.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
About the author
Wendell Berry
316 books5,495 followersWendell Berry was a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of Port William, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).
Berry was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He was also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 2014 to his death, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
abridged from Wikipedia.
Berry was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He was also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 2014 to his death, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
abridged from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 17, 2017
Openings (1968), Wendell Berry’s second major volume of verse, revealsa poet—and a man—approaching the fullness of what he would soon become.
Four years before, in 1965, Berry—a native of Port Royal, Kentucky—abandoned the literary rat race in NYC and, having purchased land near Port Royal, began to divide his time between farming his land, writing, and teaching at the University of Kentucky, an hour and a half’s drive away. In time he would devote himself exclusively to farming and writing, but this book is the product of that transition period. He is not only buoyed by the beauties of this new place (the sequence, “Window Poems,” which displays the marvels of the Kentucky River country which can be seen from the poet’s desk), but also burdened by his new place’s old history (the powerful ode “To My Grandfather’s Slaves.”)
These poems take on a particular intensity from the newness of these pleasures and conflicts, but I still think Berry's later poems are even better. They too are filled with joy and rage, but also rooted in a persona more grounded, more rooted in the self and the soil.
This is, however, a volume well worth reading. The meditations on nature are apt and appropriate, and the poems on history and politics, although sometimes fiery. (as in those about war in Vietnam) are always filled with compassion and rooted in a love for the land.
Here are a couple of my favorites from Openings. The first is about the beauty of a kingfisher at dusk the second about the horrors of strip mining.
BEFORE DARK
From the porch at dusk I watched
a kingfisher wild in flight
he could only have made for joy.
He came down the river, splashing
against the water's dimming face
like a skipped rock, passing
on down out of sight. And still
I could hear the splashes
farther and farther away
as it grew darker. He came back
the same way, dusky as his shadow,
sudden beyond the willows.
The splashes went on out of hearing.
It was dark then. Somewhere
the night had accommodated him
—at the place he was headed for
or where, led by his delight,
he came.
EAST KENTUCKY, 1967
What vision or blindness lives
here among the broken places
in the small of burning
and the stench of dead streams
where only machines thrive
on the death of all else?
What vision or blindness
can live in the sight of children
who inherit the eyes of broken men,
and in the sight of farms torn open
where the rich lock like toads
to the backs of the helpless?
December 2, 2024
some of them were kind of boring ngl
Read
September 6, 2026The Peace of Wild Things (1968)
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
“How exactly good it is
to know myself
In the solitude of winter…
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.”
—except from The Cold
*New Collected Poems (2012)
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
“How exactly good it is
to know myself
In the solitude of winter…
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.”
—except from The Cold
*New Collected Poems (2012)
October 4, 2026
The mystery. The old
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going.
I was surprised to read 2 of my favorites in his second book, THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS and DO NOT BE ASHAMED, written before I was born, since they seem so appropriate for our times, and have healed me again and again, simply, just naming the life we can choose for ourselves that brings pain and despair. Those poems seem like the culmination of a life well lived, not a second book. Those living inside more than outside might not understand them at all, but they speak to them as well. I promise reality tv will never bring any human the peace found on a riverbank or creekside. Or under the stars or on top of a hill or mountain, or the treks there. Beautiful, accessible, inspiring poetry.
THE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING ELSE
1.
A spring wind blowing
the smell of the ground
through the intersections of traffic,
the mind turns, seeks a new
nativity-another place,
simpler, less weighted
by what has already been.
Another place!
it's enough to grieve me-
that old dream of going,
of becoming a better man
just by getting up and going
to a better place.
2.
The mystery. The old
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going.
-a place where thought
can take its shape
as quietly in the mind
as water in a pitcher,
or a man can be
safely without thought
-see the day begin
and lean back,
a simple wakefulness filling
perfectly
the spaces among the leaves.
OCTOBER 10
Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.
The calling of a crow sounds
loud-a landmark-now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.
THE PORCH OVER THE RIVER
In the dusk of the river, the wind
gone, the leaves grow still-
the beautiful poise of lightness,
the heavy world pushing toward it.
Beyond, on the face of the water,
lies the reflection of another tree,
inverted, pulsing with the short strokes
of waves the wind has stopped driving.
In a time when men no longer
can imagine the lives of their sons
this is still the world-
the world of my time, the grind
of engines marking the country
like an audible map, the high dark
marked by the flight of men,
lights stranger than stars.
The phoebes cross and re-cross
the openings, alert
for what may still be earned
from the light. The whippoorwills
begin, and the frogs. And the dark
falls, again, as it must.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
DO NOT BE ASHAMED
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.
WINDOW POEMS
2.
The foliage has dropped
below the window's grave edge,
baring the sky, the distant
hills, the branches,
the year's greenness
gone down from the high
light where it so fairly
defied falling.
The country opens to the sky,
the eye purified among hard facts:
the black grid of the window,
the wood of trees branching
outward and outward
to the nervousness of twigs,
buds asleep in the air.
18.
Sometimes he thinks the earth
might be better without men.
He's ashamed of that.
It worries him,
him being a man, and needing
to think well of the others
in order to think well of himself.
And there are
a few he loves
few he thinks well of,
as well as himself almost,
and he would like to say
better. But history
is so largely unforgivable.
15.
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree's renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
19.
Peace. May he waken
not too late from his wraths
to find his window still
clear in its wall, and the world
there. Within things
there is peace, and at the end
of things. It is the mind
turned away from the world
that turns against it.
The armed Presidents stand
on deadly islands in the air,
overshadowing the crops.
Peace. Let men, who cannot be brothers
to themselves, be brothers
to mulleins and daisies
that have learned to live on the earth.
Let them understand the pride
of sycamores and thrushes
that receive the light gladly, and do not
think to illuminate themselves.
Let them know that the foxes and the owl
are joyous in their lives,
and their gayety is praise to the heavens,
and they do not raven with their minds.
In the night the devourer,
and in the morning all things
find the light a comfort.
Peace. The earth turns
against all living, in the end.
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going.
I was surprised to read 2 of my favorites in his second book, THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS and DO NOT BE ASHAMED, written before I was born, since they seem so appropriate for our times, and have healed me again and again, simply, just naming the life we can choose for ourselves that brings pain and despair. Those poems seem like the culmination of a life well lived, not a second book. Those living inside more than outside might not understand them at all, but they speak to them as well. I promise reality tv will never bring any human the peace found on a riverbank or creekside. Or under the stars or on top of a hill or mountain, or the treks there. Beautiful, accessible, inspiring poetry.
THE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING ELSE
1.
A spring wind blowing
the smell of the ground
through the intersections of traffic,
the mind turns, seeks a new
nativity-another place,
simpler, less weighted
by what has already been.
Another place!
it's enough to grieve me-
that old dream of going,
of becoming a better man
just by getting up and going
to a better place.
2.
The mystery. The old
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going.
-a place where thought
can take its shape
as quietly in the mind
as water in a pitcher,
or a man can be
safely without thought
-see the day begin
and lean back,
a simple wakefulness filling
perfectly
the spaces among the leaves.
OCTOBER 10
Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.
The calling of a crow sounds
loud-a landmark-now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.
THE PORCH OVER THE RIVER
In the dusk of the river, the wind
gone, the leaves grow still-
the beautiful poise of lightness,
the heavy world pushing toward it.
Beyond, on the face of the water,
lies the reflection of another tree,
inverted, pulsing with the short strokes
of waves the wind has stopped driving.
In a time when men no longer
can imagine the lives of their sons
this is still the world-
the world of my time, the grind
of engines marking the country
like an audible map, the high dark
marked by the flight of men,
lights stranger than stars.
The phoebes cross and re-cross
the openings, alert
for what may still be earned
from the light. The whippoorwills
begin, and the frogs. And the dark
falls, again, as it must.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
DO NOT BE ASHAMED
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.
WINDOW POEMS
2.
The foliage has dropped
below the window's grave edge,
baring the sky, the distant
hills, the branches,
the year's greenness
gone down from the high
light where it so fairly
defied falling.
The country opens to the sky,
the eye purified among hard facts:
the black grid of the window,
the wood of trees branching
outward and outward
to the nervousness of twigs,
buds asleep in the air.
18.
Sometimes he thinks the earth
might be better without men.
He's ashamed of that.
It worries him,
him being a man, and needing
to think well of the others
in order to think well of himself.
And there are
a few he loves
few he thinks well of,
as well as himself almost,
and he would like to say
better. But history
is so largely unforgivable.
15.
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree's renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
19.
Peace. May he waken
not too late from his wraths
to find his window still
clear in its wall, and the world
there. Within things
there is peace, and at the end
of things. It is the mind
turned away from the world
that turns against it.
The armed Presidents stand
on deadly islands in the air,
overshadowing the crops.
Peace. Let men, who cannot be brothers
to themselves, be brothers
to mulleins and daisies
that have learned to live on the earth.
Let them understand the pride
of sycamores and thrushes
that receive the light gladly, and do not
think to illuminate themselves.
Let them know that the foxes and the owl
are joyous in their lives,
and their gayety is praise to the heavens,
and they do not raven with their minds.
In the night the devourer,
and in the morning all things
find the light a comfort.
Peace. The earth turns
against all living, in the end.
June 14, 2014
I'm not really a flowers
and trees poetry
appreciator--I'd rather
just gaze out the
window by myself, but
wax philosophical
with windows and war
and "the earth / is
poisoned with narrow lives"
and you'll have me listening,
invaded by the "we" of "Dark with Power"
and "The Want of Peace."
and trees poetry
appreciator--I'd rather
just gaze out the
window by myself, but
wax philosophical
with windows and war
and "the earth / is
poisoned with narrow lives"
and you'll have me listening,
invaded by the "we" of "Dark with Power"
and "The Want of Peace."
June 23, 2020
In the great Ingmar Bergman film "Winter Light," one of the characters obsesses over the potential of atomic annihilation. In the Paul Schrader film "First Reformed," influenced by Bergman, a similar character is obsessed with the potential of a catastrophic climate disaster. In this collection of poems, published in 1968, Berry is concerned with both of these things, and more. He writes a little of war, and a lot of the way that humans are wreaking havoc on the natural world, and about a general anxiety and unease about other disasters besides. He worries about his children and their future and the future of the planet. He wonders if the planet wouldn't be better off without humans at all, but then he remembers the ones he loves and he feels the tension.
Actually, I was ambivalent about the first half of the book. I enjoyed it, but it lacked the thematic focus of Berry's first collection. However, when the Window Poems began about half way through (this was the second time I'd read these particular poems), the collection takes shape and the themes converge and the thematic intensity takes form, and the collection takes on a new level of beauty and import. In particular, Window Poems 10-15 were stirring and the imagery and tension was palpable. The poem "To a Siberian Woodsman" also really stirred me, it reminded me of some recent Szymborska poems I'd read, where the natural world knows no borders and does not respect the broken structures of humanity; this poem by Berry sees the Russian woodsman not as "communist foe" but rather as kindred spirit, which demonstrates the extreme brokenness of our nationalism.
Although the first half of the collection was hit or miss, the second half was wonderful reading, pulling me into another place entirely.
Actually, I was ambivalent about the first half of the book. I enjoyed it, but it lacked the thematic focus of Berry's first collection. However, when the Window Poems began about half way through (this was the second time I'd read these particular poems), the collection takes shape and the themes converge and the thematic intensity takes form, and the collection takes on a new level of beauty and import. In particular, Window Poems 10-15 were stirring and the imagery and tension was palpable. The poem "To a Siberian Woodsman" also really stirred me, it reminded me of some recent Szymborska poems I'd read, where the natural world knows no borders and does not respect the broken structures of humanity; this poem by Berry sees the Russian woodsman not as "communist foe" but rather as kindred spirit, which demonstrates the extreme brokenness of our nationalism.
Although the first half of the collection was hit or miss, the second half was wonderful reading, pulling me into another place entirely.
April 25, 2024
I love this collection. "Marriage to Tanya" was the essence of my marriage vows. Some might say, "What a downer," but I already knew the marriage we had started to create. Even the, it wasn't about sweetness and light. Here's the part of the poem I used:
"Marriage"
to Tanya"
You come near me
with the nearness of sleep.
And yet, I am not quiet.
It is o be broken. It is to be torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. Iturn against you,
I break from you. I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.
"Marriage"
to Tanya"
You come near me
with the nearness of sleep.
And yet, I am not quiet.
It is o be broken. It is to be torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. Iturn against you,
I break from you. I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.
August 3, 2021
Window Poems and The Peace of Wild Things - favorites. It's interesting to read Berry's earlier poetry after reading his later sabbath poems, I feel like I'm on a journey backwards in time with him. I admire his lifelong pursuit of stillness.
May 3, 2024
Wendell Berry's poetry is a treasure. Full of hope, caring and thoughtful words. He should be promoted and taught and discussed in all schools, not just his native Kentucky. He needs to be shared and enjoyed.
September 30, 2026
Poems from the late 1960s. Many reveal a man who knew nature and appreciated where he lived (“April Woods: Morning”). Also moody and reflective poems and anti-war ones; poems that are angry about careless use of the planet (“East Kentucky, 1967).
September 8, 2017
My favorite volume of Berry so far.
September 18, 2025
Though I love many of Berry’s essays, I found the poems in this collection to be awkward and a slog to read.
July 28, 2007
Fruitful poems by an agrarian farmer in Kentucky. Check the timing.
April 10, 2016
Astoundingly insightful, heart-opening and politically engaging in just the right way.
October 17, 2016
Draws my heart homeward.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews