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A Small Porch: Sabbath Poems 2014 and 2015 together with The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation
More than thirty-five years ago, when the weather allowed, Wendell Berry began spending his sabbaths outdoors, walking and wandering around familiar territory, seeking a deep intimacy only time could provide. These walks arranged themselves into poems and each year since he has completed a sequence dated by the year of its composition. Last year we collected the lot into a collection, This Day, the Sabbath Poems 1979-2013.
This new sequence for the following year is one of the richest yet. This group provides a virtual syllabus for all of Mr. Berry’s cultural and agricultural work in concentrated form. Many of these poems are drawn from the view from a small porch in the woods, a place of stillness and reflection, a vantage point “of the one/life of the forest composed/of uncountable lives in countless/years each life coherent itself within/ the coherence, the great composure,/of all.”
Recently Berry has been reflecting on more than a half century of reading, to discover and to delight in the poetical, spiritual, and cultural roots of his work. In The Presence of Nature in the Natural World, Berry's survey begins with Alan of Lille's twelfth-century work, The Plaint of Nature. From the Bible through Chaucer, from Milton to Pope, from Wordsworth to the moderns, Berry's close reading is exhilarating. Moving from the canon of poetry to the sayings and texts found in agricultutre and science, closely presented, we gain new appreciation for the complexity of the issues faced in the twenty-first century by the struggling community of humans on earth.
With this long essay appended to these new Sabbath Poems, the result is an unusual book of depth and engagement. A new collection of Wendall Berry poems is always an occasion for celebration, and this eccentric gatheirng is especially so.
This new sequence for the following year is one of the richest yet. This group provides a virtual syllabus for all of Mr. Berry’s cultural and agricultural work in concentrated form. Many of these poems are drawn from the view from a small porch in the woods, a place of stillness and reflection, a vantage point “of the one/life of the forest composed/of uncountable lives in countless/years each life coherent itself within/ the coherence, the great composure,/of all.”
Recently Berry has been reflecting on more than a half century of reading, to discover and to delight in the poetical, spiritual, and cultural roots of his work. In The Presence of Nature in the Natural World, Berry's survey begins with Alan of Lille's twelfth-century work, The Plaint of Nature. From the Bible through Chaucer, from Milton to Pope, from Wordsworth to the moderns, Berry's close reading is exhilarating. Moving from the canon of poetry to the sayings and texts found in agricultutre and science, closely presented, we gain new appreciation for the complexity of the issues faced in the twenty-first century by the struggling community of humans on earth.
With this long essay appended to these new Sabbath Poems, the result is an unusual book of depth and engagement. A new collection of Wendall Berry poems is always an occasion for celebration, and this eccentric gatheirng is especially so.
159 pages, Hardcover
First published April 12, 2016
151 people are currently reading
950 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
295 books4,950 followersWendell 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."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
May 29, 2024
"You don’t know the day until
You’ve seen the last of it
Reddening the hill
And rising into night"
"The mockingbird sings his praises of his mate or of himself.
In his joy he knows no difference.
At first I called him silly and egotistical, like all lovers in the spring,
unable to say enough of his ambiguous delight,
and so he repeats himself.
And then I said, “He’s right!
Love teaches him to fail,
at this best of times,
to know whose song it is,
hers or his.”"
"To sit or walk many days and years,
looking from the woods into the woods,
will lead beyond methodology, beyond even sight,
into the sense,
the presence,
of the one life of the forest composed of uncountable lives in countless years,
each life coherent itself within the coherence,
the great composure, of all.
This no observer could make or can explain.
Within it, every thought puts the earth at stake."
Perhaps a bit uneven but poetry that brings me to so special places.
You’ve seen the last of it
Reddening the hill
And rising into night"
"The mockingbird sings his praises of his mate or of himself.
In his joy he knows no difference.
At first I called him silly and egotistical, like all lovers in the spring,
unable to say enough of his ambiguous delight,
and so he repeats himself.
And then I said, “He’s right!
Love teaches him to fail,
at this best of times,
to know whose song it is,
hers or his.”"
"To sit or walk many days and years,
looking from the woods into the woods,
will lead beyond methodology, beyond even sight,
into the sense,
the presence,
of the one life of the forest composed of uncountable lives in countless years,
each life coherent itself within the coherence,
the great composure, of all.
This no observer could make or can explain.
Within it, every thought puts the earth at stake."
Perhaps a bit uneven but poetry that brings me to so special places.
January 26, 2026
Great poems, essay at the back was interesting.
April 8, 2023
Wendell Berry is one of my very favorites, yet I, amazingly, never bothered to grab an anthology of his poetry. As others suggested, I read the essay at the back before digging into the poems. Read Berry, and you’ll see the utmost majesty in the tiniest critters and seeds. I only want to see the world as he does — I’m convinced he sees it as its creator does.
August 7, 2024
Berry's earthy poetry harkens back to a slow time where long walks in the woods were important and unrushed. His poems are seasoned with faith, though his Christianity looks very different from mine. Still, his work is worth the read.
April 22, 2021
This is a great book of poems and a fascinating and moving essay by Wendell Berry. His writings will give you a greater love for your community, the geographical location where you live, teach you many important things about being human, and encourage you to plant a garden.
I look forward to reading his fiction.
I look forward to reading his fiction.
February 12, 2018
I started this book with the essay at the back and then read the poetry and I'm glad I did because it makes Berry's poetry more explicit and meaningful. His essay, "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation" concerns our western understanding of Nature as first a kind of diety - or at least an active Personality - as illuminated by Chaucer, Spenser and Alan of Lille and later as a benign, general presence to which we escape from the "real" world. He explains how this change in understanding leads to the systems we have now that are concerned only with money making and lead to the destruction of our own homes and places. "I have no doubt at all that even if the global climate were getting better, our abuses of the land would still be the disaster most seriously threatening to the survival of humans and other creatures. Land abuse, I know, is pretty much a global phenomenon. But it is not happening in the whole world as climate change happens in the whole sky. It is happening, because it can happen, only locally, in small places, where the people who commit the abuses also live. And so my question has been, and continues to be, What can cause people to destroy the places where they live...? As always, in both the poetry and the essay, Berry is excellent, consistent and lucid.
December 30, 2024
The poetry in this collection is profound and comforting. If it were just the poems, this would be a 5-star collection easily. But the extended essay is very academic in nature, and while well-written, does seem somewhat out of place next to the poetry.
Owen’s Review: 5/5 milks bottles because dad just read me the poems and decided to spare me academic essay writing. I’m a big reader, but I like my nonfiction a little more creative if you don’t mind.
Owen’s Review: 5/5 milks bottles because dad just read me the poems and decided to spare me academic essay writing. I’m a big reader, but I like my nonfiction a little more creative if you don’t mind.
January 16, 2017
For more than 30 years Berry has been walking around his rural Kentucky property and writing his impressions he calls "Sabbath" poems. A Small Porch continues the series through 2014 and 2015. I thought them disappointing. I'm not sure why except that their energy failed to excite me as the previous "Sabbaths" had. The 2d half of the book is made up of an essay entitled "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World." He calls it a conversation, and it concerns itself with the relation of science and agriculture to the nature he sees on his Sabbath ramblings. I think it must resemble georgics.
September 8, 2016
Gathering poems Berry wrote during his sabbaths of 2014 and 2015, this book serves as a follow-up to This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979 - 2012 which gathered previous years. While a long essay makes up half the book, I found the poetry strong, exhibiting Berry's characteristic reflections on the relations of man and nature. This is not the place to start with Berry but it is an excellent addition to his body of work.
May 8, 2017
Also a permanent member of the 'currently reading' list....
July 23, 2017
This book is about half poems and half an extended essay called "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World." The poems are pretty consistent with his earlier "Sabbath poems," and I can't say I really got anything incremental out of reading them. (To some extent this sort of seems like the point to me; if you take a cyclical view of nature and life, there can't be much additional value to reading 10% more poems on the same topic by the same person--maybe better to re-read a smaller number!)
The essay was interesting if not totally compelling to me. It's different from other WB essays I've read (e.g. "The Unsettling of America") in that it's basically literary criticism; Berry attempts to trace a certain view of nature (as interdependent with humanity, more or less) through a number of literary sources, starting with the medieval Alan of Lille, through Chaucer and Spenser, and argues that this view disappears from the literary scene with Wordsworth and the Romantics, who start to treat nature as something "apart." He argues that this view does live on, but only in the views and words of common people who work the land.
WB is certainly a traditionalist and in this case he irked my liberal sensibilities just a little bit. Near the beginning of the essay, he mounts a brief pre-emptive defense of why he is tracing this view through specifically Western/English sources, without looking to canons of other cultures for resonances. Essentially he says that he made this choice because he sees himself as constituted in large part by the culture and tradition in which he was raised, so he wouldn't be able to connect as deeply to other traditions. Maybe there is some truth to this, but I also feel like once we start getting back to the 1100s (and particularly someone like Alan of Lille who is not broadly accepted as a cultural wellspring, as compared to say Homer), it might as well be a different culture. Anyway, I really don't begrudge Berry his choice of topic--it's perfectly fine to write about the Western tradition. I just didn't really like the essentialist defense he mounted, and would probably have been more satisfied with no defense at all (or simply, "here are some people I've been interested in recently; I'm sure there are interesting resonances in other cultures that I haven't learned about yet"). I guess that is what part of what makes me a liberal and him a conservative.
The essay was interesting if not totally compelling to me. It's different from other WB essays I've read (e.g. "The Unsettling of America") in that it's basically literary criticism; Berry attempts to trace a certain view of nature (as interdependent with humanity, more or less) through a number of literary sources, starting with the medieval Alan of Lille, through Chaucer and Spenser, and argues that this view disappears from the literary scene with Wordsworth and the Romantics, who start to treat nature as something "apart." He argues that this view does live on, but only in the views and words of common people who work the land.
WB is certainly a traditionalist and in this case he irked my liberal sensibilities just a little bit. Near the beginning of the essay, he mounts a brief pre-emptive defense of why he is tracing this view through specifically Western/English sources, without looking to canons of other cultures for resonances. Essentially he says that he made this choice because he sees himself as constituted in large part by the culture and tradition in which he was raised, so he wouldn't be able to connect as deeply to other traditions. Maybe there is some truth to this, but I also feel like once we start getting back to the 1100s (and particularly someone like Alan of Lille who is not broadly accepted as a cultural wellspring, as compared to say Homer), it might as well be a different culture. Anyway, I really don't begrudge Berry his choice of topic--it's perfectly fine to write about the Western tradition. I just didn't really like the essentialist defense he mounted, and would probably have been more satisfied with no defense at all (or simply, "here are some people I've been interested in recently; I'm sure there are interesting resonances in other cultures that I haven't learned about yet"). I guess that is what part of what makes me a liberal and him a conservative.
January 22, 2024
I immediately perk up whenever I hear Wendell Berry's name mentioned. Imagine Ben and my surprise when, listening to Nick Offerman's acceptance speech for his role in The Last of Us, he quoted Berry casually and without fanfare. It was yet another reassurance that Berry is a voice for steady people, for engaged and embodied people, those who care about the leavings of the Earth. Upon traveling to New Castle, Kentucky to visit Berry's bookstore, I walked away with two books--this being one of them.
I'd read Berry's Jayber Crow, a work of fiction, but this was much different--more directly Berry himself. This small volume of poems was thoroughly enjoyable, but more than that, it was particularly inspired. I appreciate that, alongside his poems enriched with Nature and his appreciation of being taught by Nature, he openly questions the industrial farming complex and unfettered capitalism's ability to crush the small family farm, people as a whole, and the earth. The poems were quite good, and the book ends with a lengthy essay on Berry's perception and growing understanding of the personified Nature. He alludes to works by everyone from Alan of Lille to Chaucer to contemporaries of his in rural farming. He makes the case that the more mankind works against nature to exploit it, the more nature will fight back. It is only under the tutelage of nature and alongside and within nature's bounds that cultivation and healthy practices of the earth can transpire. In all, I found the essay to be more complex than expected and a tad tedious.
Otherwise, I'm glad to have read this book.
I'd read Berry's Jayber Crow, a work of fiction, but this was much different--more directly Berry himself. This small volume of poems was thoroughly enjoyable, but more than that, it was particularly inspired. I appreciate that, alongside his poems enriched with Nature and his appreciation of being taught by Nature, he openly questions the industrial farming complex and unfettered capitalism's ability to crush the small family farm, people as a whole, and the earth. The poems were quite good, and the book ends with a lengthy essay on Berry's perception and growing understanding of the personified Nature. He alludes to works by everyone from Alan of Lille to Chaucer to contemporaries of his in rural farming. He makes the case that the more mankind works against nature to exploit it, the more nature will fight back. It is only under the tutelage of nature and alongside and within nature's bounds that cultivation and healthy practices of the earth can transpire. In all, I found the essay to be more complex than expected and a tad tedious.
Otherwise, I'm glad to have read this book.
May 19, 2021
An excellent book, although the title is the teensiest bit misleading.
There are a number of Wendell Berry poems at the beginning of this book, and most are lovely and evocative, in the way that most of his poems are lovely and evocative. Most of the book, however, is not poetry. It's a near-book-length essay about the place of nature in pre-modern Western religious poetry, and how our understanding of our relationship with nature has been shaped...or malformed...by the narratives and psalters of our evolving culture.
The essay is good stuff, rich and thought provoking and worthy of a meditative read. But, again, it is not poetry. It's about poetry. It quotes poetry. It illuminates the dynamics of poetry in classical and pre Enlightenment literatures. It's cool. I found it fascinating, intellectually engaging, and worthy of spiritual reflection.
But not, as I may have mentioned before, poetry. Ah well.
There are a number of Wendell Berry poems at the beginning of this book, and most are lovely and evocative, in the way that most of his poems are lovely and evocative. Most of the book, however, is not poetry. It's a near-book-length essay about the place of nature in pre-modern Western religious poetry, and how our understanding of our relationship with nature has been shaped...or malformed...by the narratives and psalters of our evolving culture.
The essay is good stuff, rich and thought provoking and worthy of a meditative read. But, again, it is not poetry. It's about poetry. It quotes poetry. It illuminates the dynamics of poetry in classical and pre Enlightenment literatures. It's cool. I found it fascinating, intellectually engaging, and worthy of spiritual reflection.
But not, as I may have mentioned before, poetry. Ah well.
February 6, 2020
The poetry is only about 35% of this book. The rest is an essay about Nature (yes, that capital was intentional). I’ll be honest, I read probably half the essay and then decided it wasn’t for me and I have too many other things to read. He goes into a pretty detailed Analysis of several Old English poems that talk about Nature as well as talking about how he learned much about Nature from many different religions. I really appreciate his views on how we should be caring for God’s creation but there was a lot that wasn’t biblical to sift through too.
June 19, 2020
A beautiful Kentucky read, with sharp poetry and thoughtful ruminations on nature and being and our Creator.
The long essay at the end was very interesting, but Berry focused solely on works by English authors on the relationship between humans and nature. There are so so many approaches to conservation, land-based subsistence practices, and local responses to climate change that I wish he would’ve brought another angle into the discussion.
Thanks to Lydia for the lovely and lively read!
The long essay at the end was very interesting, but Berry focused solely on works by English authors on the relationship between humans and nature. There are so so many approaches to conservation, land-based subsistence practices, and local responses to climate change that I wish he would’ve brought another angle into the discussion.
Thanks to Lydia for the lovely and lively read!
August 8, 2024
I’m a big fan of Berry, and I found here some excellent poems with real connection to the blood, grit, and existential conditions of all living things. “Sabbaths 2014” IV, VII, and VIII.8, and “Sabbaths 2015” II and VII really stood out to me with the same feel as “For The Hog Killing” (one of my favorite poems of all time).
These poems come chained to half a book of absolutely boring prose. His essay on the personification of Nature in western Literature put me to sleep.
These poems come chained to half a book of absolutely boring prose. His essay on the personification of Nature in western Literature put me to sleep.
December 14, 2018
A few of the poems I really enjoyed. His thoughts on the representation of nature in English literature, and his reaction against Romantic idealizers, I found quite interesting though outside of my wheelhouse. His defense against the "dumb farmer" trope concluding the book was my favorite take, even if it is boilerplate Wendell.
February 25, 2024
I loved the concept of this book and hoped it might inspire me to do my own, personal version of this concept. However, that's not what this book turned out to be. I enjoyed some of the poetry, but the extended essay was much more than I signed up for starting the book.
December 18, 2024
Phenomenal.
April 15, 2018
Beautiful poems about seeing nature as sacred. The author observes the changing of the season earth through eyes of deep gratitude.
August 30, 2018
The poetry was good, but I think the essay "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation"—in which Berry traces a certain conception of nature from Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature through Chaucer, Spenser, Piers Plowman, Milton, Pope, and Wordsworth through to the present—is the real gem of the collection.
September 13, 2016
I enjoyed the poems more than the essay, but that is more due to my ineptness in reading Chaucer than any fault of Wendell Berry's. This is a serious book with Wendell calling out for us to work hard on saving the world as we know it. It is a wonderful book. I feel blessed to have read it.
#9
"To care for what we know requires
care for what we don't, the world's lives
dark in the soil, dark in the dark.
........
And our competence to do no
permanent wrong to the land
is limited by the land's competence
to suffer our ignorance, our errors,
and---provided the scale
is right---to recover, to be made whole."
III
"Nightmare of the age invade
my days and darken them,
but sometimes my sleep is lighted
by a better dream. On night,
as if in justice perhaps or mercy,
or by some kindness of this world,
I dreamed of my father. Long ago
he would play the piano, lively songs
of World War II, rocking on the bench,
sometimes singing, as he played.
And then a lasting sorrow came,
and no more piano music after that.
In my dream my father was again
playing the piano. He was beautiful.
He was smiling. He was playing
an elated improvisation on a tune
neither of us had known in the old time.
The notes shone singly as they gathered
brightly together. "Daddy," I said,
"you could play anywhere!" He smiled
at his thought's music, and played on."
In the essay,
"The main characteristic of Nature's farming can therefore by summed up in a few words. Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock;she always raises mixed crops; great pains are
taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease."
#9
"To care for what we know requires
care for what we don't, the world's lives
dark in the soil, dark in the dark.
........
And our competence to do no
permanent wrong to the land
is limited by the land's competence
to suffer our ignorance, our errors,
and---provided the scale
is right---to recover, to be made whole."
III
"Nightmare of the age invade
my days and darken them,
but sometimes my sleep is lighted
by a better dream. On night,
as if in justice perhaps or mercy,
or by some kindness of this world,
I dreamed of my father. Long ago
he would play the piano, lively songs
of World War II, rocking on the bench,
sometimes singing, as he played.
And then a lasting sorrow came,
and no more piano music after that.
In my dream my father was again
playing the piano. He was beautiful.
He was smiling. He was playing
an elated improvisation on a tune
neither of us had known in the old time.
The notes shone singly as they gathered
brightly together. "Daddy," I said,
"you could play anywhere!" He smiled
at his thought's music, and played on."
In the essay,
"The main characteristic of Nature's farming can therefore by summed up in a few words. Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock;she always raises mixed crops; great pains are
taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease."
June 13, 2021
"[T]he good of the natural world depends upon human goodness, which is to say the human practice of the human virtues." (147)
As always, I was deeply moved by the beauty and the wisdom of Berry's poetry. But I was even more gripped by the long essay that takes up half of this book. It gave me a lot to ponder, about nature, virtue, education, and science. These were the most important points for me:
"Since industry has no language with which to speak to us as living souls and children of Nature, but only as interchangeable employees, customers, or victims, by what language can we, in the fullness of our being, speak back to industrialism?" (80)
[I see that there is a partial answer in my teaching of Socratic, social justice, and contemplative traditions: the language of honest reasoning, the language of justice, and the language of goodness, in terms of health and beauty. But as Berry points out, these languages are fast being removed from higher (and lower) education.]
"I am inescapably a product of "western" culture, first as I was born and grew up in it, and then as I, by my work, have made myself able to know it and more responsibly to inherit it." (80)
"[T]he integrity of the natural world depends upon the maintenance by humans of _their_integrity by the practice of the virtues. The two integrities are interdependent. They cannot be separated and they must not be separately thought about." (86)
The ancient notion of Nature as a deity "comes from an intuition of order and harmony in creation that is old and independent of empirical proofs.... [A]mong people still interested in the qualities of things, intuition still maintains its place and its standing as a way to know." (89)
"[O]nce we acknowledge, once we permit our language to acknowledge, the immense miracle of the existence of this living world, in place of nothing, then we confront again that world and our existence in it, forever more mysterious than known. And then the air swarms with questions that are scientific, artistic, religious, and all of them insistently economic.... The summary questions are: What are our responsibilities? and What must we do? ... We must either care properly for all of it or continue our lethal damage to all of it. That this is true we may be unable to know until we have understood how, and how severely, we have been penalized by the academic and professional divorces among the sciences and the arts." (92-93)
"Chaucer's sense of humor [was] pointed at those who think of goodness as a sacrifice paid here for admission to Heaven." (97) [I remember the college course in which I was made to realize that I had been raised to believe that, and how foolish and sad a belief it was.]
"We have our lives by no right of our own, but instead by the privilege of sharing in the life that sustains all creatures." (104)
"I do not mean that [Spencer] used his poetry as a vehicle to express or communicate his finished thought, but rather that his poetry was the vital means by which his thinking was done.... [I]t is clear that some poets have recognized that poetry in its way, like prose in its way, can be serviceable to thought, and when they have needed to do so they have used it as a way to think." (107)
John Milton's Comus "takes up the conventional _carpe diem_ theme of the transience of mortal beauty and roses that wither, but he is arguing, not for using the world but for using it up. His ideology goes beyond mere personal gluttony and lust to a modern avarice and utilitarianism: the assumption, laid bare in our own time, that all of the natural world that we humans do not consume either is worthless or is wasted." (110)
"Nature requires of us a _practical_ reverence." (111)
"What I am sure of is that we have lost the old apprehension of Nature as a being accessible to imagination, linking Heaven and Earth, making and informing the incarnate creation, and requiring of humanity an obedience at once worshipful, ethical, and economic. Her stern instruction, never disproved, that we humans have a rightful but responsible place in the order of things, has disappeared, and has been absent a long time from our working consciousness and our formal schooling." (113)
Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" "displays pretty fully our modern love for nature, our often-lamented distance from it, and the vacationer's sensibility and economy that brings us occasionally "close" to it again, allowing us to feel more or less a religious sense of beauty and peace.... His version of "nature" thus lacks altogether the intelligence and moral energy of Nature as she appeared to the older poets. Of Wordsworth she seems to have required nothing at all in particular, except perhaps his admiration.... Nature is understood merely as the purveyor of a sort of consolation or what we now call 'mental health'. Nobody could take from this version of Nature any sense of our economic dependence on her, much less of her dependence on our virtue." (114-116)
"As a farmer I have lived daily with ... an ever-fascinating and utterly intimidating question: What should I be doing to care properly for this (as it happens) very difficult and demanding place? And a further one: How can I make myself a man capable of seeing what is the right thing to do, and of doing it?" (126) [Hence my philosophy that education means simultaneously working on the self and working on the world.]
Experts answer questions with instructions "presumed to be applicable to all persons and to any and every place within a designated region or zone. This ... is not enough because it includes no knowledge of the particular and unique place where the expertise is to be applied." (126) [And so with teaching "methods".]
"Nature has no bias in favor of humans. She gave us, along with all her children, the great gift of life in a rich world, the wealth of which reduces finally to its thin layer of fertile soil. When we have squandered that, no matter how we may repent, it is simply and finally gone." (141)
"Beyond the experimental or empirical proofs of science, there may be other ways of determining the truth of a solution .... Is the solution valid economically as well as ecologically? Does it serve the interest both of the land and of the land's people?... Can it reconcile utility and beauty? Is it compatible with the practice of the virtues?" (145)
"I am talking now of a science subordinate and limited, dedicated to the service of things greater than itself, as every science and art ought to be. There are some things it won't do, some dangers it won't risk." (151)
"[B]elieving that the human mind is so capacious as to contain the whole universe and its whole truth, is characteristic of a kind of science that is at once romantic and industrial, ever in search of new worlds to conquer. From its work, I fear, we can expect only a continuing spillover of violence, to the world and to ourselves." (152)
As always, I was deeply moved by the beauty and the wisdom of Berry's poetry. But I was even more gripped by the long essay that takes up half of this book. It gave me a lot to ponder, about nature, virtue, education, and science. These were the most important points for me:
"Since industry has no language with which to speak to us as living souls and children of Nature, but only as interchangeable employees, customers, or victims, by what language can we, in the fullness of our being, speak back to industrialism?" (80)
[I see that there is a partial answer in my teaching of Socratic, social justice, and contemplative traditions: the language of honest reasoning, the language of justice, and the language of goodness, in terms of health and beauty. But as Berry points out, these languages are fast being removed from higher (and lower) education.]
"I am inescapably a product of "western" culture, first as I was born and grew up in it, and then as I, by my work, have made myself able to know it and more responsibly to inherit it." (80)
"[T]he integrity of the natural world depends upon the maintenance by humans of _their_integrity by the practice of the virtues. The two integrities are interdependent. They cannot be separated and they must not be separately thought about." (86)
The ancient notion of Nature as a deity "comes from an intuition of order and harmony in creation that is old and independent of empirical proofs.... [A]mong people still interested in the qualities of things, intuition still maintains its place and its standing as a way to know." (89)
"[O]nce we acknowledge, once we permit our language to acknowledge, the immense miracle of the existence of this living world, in place of nothing, then we confront again that world and our existence in it, forever more mysterious than known. And then the air swarms with questions that are scientific, artistic, religious, and all of them insistently economic.... The summary questions are: What are our responsibilities? and What must we do? ... We must either care properly for all of it or continue our lethal damage to all of it. That this is true we may be unable to know until we have understood how, and how severely, we have been penalized by the academic and professional divorces among the sciences and the arts." (92-93)
"Chaucer's sense of humor [was] pointed at those who think of goodness as a sacrifice paid here for admission to Heaven." (97) [I remember the college course in which I was made to realize that I had been raised to believe that, and how foolish and sad a belief it was.]
"We have our lives by no right of our own, but instead by the privilege of sharing in the life that sustains all creatures." (104)
"I do not mean that [Spencer] used his poetry as a vehicle to express or communicate his finished thought, but rather that his poetry was the vital means by which his thinking was done.... [I]t is clear that some poets have recognized that poetry in its way, like prose in its way, can be serviceable to thought, and when they have needed to do so they have used it as a way to think." (107)
John Milton's Comus "takes up the conventional _carpe diem_ theme of the transience of mortal beauty and roses that wither, but he is arguing, not for using the world but for using it up. His ideology goes beyond mere personal gluttony and lust to a modern avarice and utilitarianism: the assumption, laid bare in our own time, that all of the natural world that we humans do not consume either is worthless or is wasted." (110)
"Nature requires of us a _practical_ reverence." (111)
"What I am sure of is that we have lost the old apprehension of Nature as a being accessible to imagination, linking Heaven and Earth, making and informing the incarnate creation, and requiring of humanity an obedience at once worshipful, ethical, and economic. Her stern instruction, never disproved, that we humans have a rightful but responsible place in the order of things, has disappeared, and has been absent a long time from our working consciousness and our formal schooling." (113)
Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" "displays pretty fully our modern love for nature, our often-lamented distance from it, and the vacationer's sensibility and economy that brings us occasionally "close" to it again, allowing us to feel more or less a religious sense of beauty and peace.... His version of "nature" thus lacks altogether the intelligence and moral energy of Nature as she appeared to the older poets. Of Wordsworth she seems to have required nothing at all in particular, except perhaps his admiration.... Nature is understood merely as the purveyor of a sort of consolation or what we now call 'mental health'. Nobody could take from this version of Nature any sense of our economic dependence on her, much less of her dependence on our virtue." (114-116)
"As a farmer I have lived daily with ... an ever-fascinating and utterly intimidating question: What should I be doing to care properly for this (as it happens) very difficult and demanding place? And a further one: How can I make myself a man capable of seeing what is the right thing to do, and of doing it?" (126) [Hence my philosophy that education means simultaneously working on the self and working on the world.]
Experts answer questions with instructions "presumed to be applicable to all persons and to any and every place within a designated region or zone. This ... is not enough because it includes no knowledge of the particular and unique place where the expertise is to be applied." (126) [And so with teaching "methods".]
"Nature has no bias in favor of humans. She gave us, along with all her children, the great gift of life in a rich world, the wealth of which reduces finally to its thin layer of fertile soil. When we have squandered that, no matter how we may repent, it is simply and finally gone." (141)
"Beyond the experimental or empirical proofs of science, there may be other ways of determining the truth of a solution .... Is the solution valid economically as well as ecologically? Does it serve the interest both of the land and of the land's people?... Can it reconcile utility and beauty? Is it compatible with the practice of the virtues?" (145)
"I am talking now of a science subordinate and limited, dedicated to the service of things greater than itself, as every science and art ought to be. There are some things it won't do, some dangers it won't risk." (151)
"[B]elieving that the human mind is so capacious as to contain the whole universe and its whole truth, is characteristic of a kind of science that is at once romantic and industrial, ever in search of new worlds to conquer. From its work, I fear, we can expect only a continuing spillover of violence, to the world and to ourselves." (152)
March 11, 2021
Lovely lovely lovely. The poems reminded me of liturgies or psalms. I’ve not ever been much of a poetry reader, but I really savored these and the way poetry forces me to slow down and digest what I’m reading (I tend to speed read too much), really seeking to understand and enjoy. And the essay at the back was also very enlightening, the first of Berry’s non-fiction work I’ve read.
November 8, 2023
June 2016: This is Wendell Berry's latest book (June 2016). It is 3 parts - two Sabbath poems, one essay. The essay discusses man's dealings with nature and makes an excellent read. I liked the poetry, but I'd recommend one of his larger collections if you haven't read him before. However, this book is a great start for both poetry and an essay!
November 2023: I just finished rereading this book. I still found it to be excellent. I found myself enjoying the last third of the book (the essay) more this time around.
November 2023: I just finished rereading this book. I still found it to be excellent. I found myself enjoying the last third of the book (the essay) more this time around.
February 6, 2017
I just love everything I've ever read from Berry, and this collection of Sabbath poems is no different. It's more nature/agriculture/environment focused than some of his other collections, but powerful and beautiful and organic and rich nonetheless. I loved these poems and flagged many of them for future re-reads!
November 3, 2021
Loved the poetry, loved the essay. The essay in particular added to the thread I’ve been reading and thinking of more, with regards to Nature. The ways we view Nature, how we take care of her (or more often don’t in our current society), and how to repair those threads and be rooted in place.
July 19, 2016
Poems followed by an essay on care of the earth
August 7, 2016
Another beautiful book of poetry.
February 8, 2024
Berry argues around an idea that there is a sort of morally objective land ethic derived from ecological first principles for how humans should relate to their environment. Such land ethics are diverse and vary by local ecology and local human culture. But all were arrived at by farming communities of good sense that have stayed in place for millennia, created for purely practical reasons of self-preservation. Humans who treat their environment with greed and impatience and stupidity will degrade it and erode its ability to support them (i.e. destroying soil fertility by over harvesting/not rotating crops appropriately, causing landslides by chopping down forests on hillslopes, etc). Agricultural communities from China to Europe evolved the same idea of sustainability – preserve soil b/c soil is the basis of life.
Berry traces a lineage for this idea as far back as Virgil, though he concentrates more on Alan of Lille, who wrote that Nature, the deific personification of the natural world, enjoins humans to be 1) natural, in the sense that all species are natural and live in physical bodies w/ physical needs and reproduce, and 2) live according to a specifically human nature, which entails living with such virtues as chastity, temperance, generosity, and humility. It’s striking to see both how far back such an ecological thinking goes and the similarities between a Western source and Eastern thinking. There are similar themes found throughout Daoist and Confucian thought, that in times of poor governance the people will use resources unsustainably and there will be ecological disaster and consequent famine and floods. This is a really interestingly ancient idea – that the landscape reflects the embodiment of virtues by the humans living on the landscape. And it strikes me as one that feels very ancient and neglected b/c of its focus on virtues and individualized collective responsibility. Again this gets me back to thinking about Teillard de Chardin and the idea of the noosphere. Several people have thought of the evolution of the biosphere being the creation of a new sphere, one built from the collective imaginings of human thought and culture. But this isn’t something that needs to be envisioned floating through a spiritual aether in the upper stratosphere. Instead it can be seen as the modification of the biosphere on the surface. Our penchant for wooden houses and furniture is reflected in huge tracts of tree plantations standing in measured rows, our gluttony for red meat can be seen in the erasure of the Amazon rainforest, our carelessness in the rush for profit can be witnessed on the oil slick seas around wrecked oil tankers. In a very real and physical sense, the world now reflects what we choose to make of it. But not in the sense that one person decides to cut down a forest. Rather, we’re all performing according to the system we find ourselves in, allowing ourselves to be shuffled about and conduct the tasks we’re incentivized to complete. And the system reflects the values of the society that made it. We need to rethink what our values are. A society that values virtues like chastity, temperance, generosity, and humility is not one that will wreck a global ecology. What would the biosphere look like if those were our dominant values, instead of profit, individual freedom at the expense of collective freedom and well being, and self-aggrandizement? What would our society look like?
Other interesting ideas
religion is inextricably linked to an economy of the land. And economy is the prudent use of natural resources to supply the necessities of life. Extravagance and wastefulness are thus sins, in a moral sense, as desecration of nature for unjust ends
even if we could solve climate change via some fantastical technological feat of geo-engineering, “land abuse” would still imperil the continuation of the human species.
materialist positivist science which assumes the universe is fully knowable and which seeks to understand to better profit from/more efficiently exploit nature is industrial and Romantic. Science that acknowledges that ‘the farther we extend the radius of knowledge, the larger becomes the circumference of mystery’ is humbler and doesn’t require humans to be masters of the universe. Rather it allows mysteries to persist and can work with patience to understand the local and specific.
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