A Part

by Wendell Berry

The agrarian message has perhaps been the most enduring one of American literature, and we are indeed fortunate to have Wendell Berry continuing in that fine tradition. Mr. Berry writes of values and qualities that are timeless. His vision of reality, sourced in the Kentucky farm that has fed and sheltered the Berry family for three generations, is one of caution and warning, blending his work on the land with his love of family, his faith, his anger, his hope.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1980

About the author

Wendell 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.

Reviews

[Rachel Herschberger]

I have thoroughly enjoyed this slim booklet of some of Berry’s poems. He writes about the rhythms of nature and the land, of faith and the timeless values that should guide us. So good.

[Sanjuro]

Charming Agrarian poems, Berry writes of things some might consider old fashioned but are as such more relevant now. It seems humanity is insistent on losing its way, and the simple life described by Berry, still full of immediacy and passion, serves in some way as a clarion call to a more natural form of living. Favorites here include: A Purification, To What Listens, A Meeting, and July, 1773.

[Sam]

“As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect -but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet this nothing
is the seed of all- the clear eye
of Heaven, where all the worlds appear.”

[Bobby]

This was my first foray into Wendell Berry's vast catalog. A meditator on the natural and spiritual, Berry writes with an intimacy that goes beyond simple musings about the color of leaves or a distant God. These poems have a rich, living feel that can only come from someone who has spent a lot of time in honest contemplation and physical experience. After 20 pages, I found myself pining for a (surely romanticized) small farmstead bordered by an old forest hiding streams and surrounding hills, envisioning myself in a rocking chair on the front porch, coffee in my calloused, worn hands. A complete rural fantasy, but an appreciated one even if it only challenges me to think about my natural environments and small yet important place in a big Creation. I'm looking forward to reading more of Berry and everything it offers.

[Bonita Jewel]

This poetry collection offers a great sampling of Wendell Berry's work, from pages-long narrative poems to short pieces of a single stanza.

I love the layers of some of these poems, rich and deep, like this one:

The Hidden Singer

The gods are less
for their love of praise.
Above and below them all
is a spirit that needs
nothing but its own
wholeness,
its health and ours.
It has made all things
by dividing itself.
It will be whole again.
To its joy we come
together--the seer
and the seen, the eater
and the eaten, the lover
and the loved. In our joining it knows
itself. It is with us then,
not as the gods
whose names crest
in unearthly fire,
but as a little bird
hidden in the leaves
who sings quietly
and waits
and sings.

[Elizabeth]

“To my mother, who gave me books” (Can an author dedication possibly get any better than this one?)

“I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.”
—excerpt from Stay Home (1980)

—-

A Meeting

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?”
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”

—-

A Warning to My Readers

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fists and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

—-

Except

Now that you have gone
and I am alone and quiet,
my contentment would be
complete, if I did not wish
you were here so I could say,
“How good it is, Tanya,
to be alone and quiet.”

*New Collected Poems (2012)

[Jordan Kinsey]

Reading Berry's works in chronological order, one soon notices that he presented his gifts to the world in a pattern of book-of-essays, book-of-poems, book-of-essays, book-of-poems...so on. Reading them this way, one soon notices that the one amplifies and magnifies the other. And vice versa.

[Renee]

lots of good poems in this selection

[Wayne]

The right poet, for the right time, in the right place. Berry’s poems speak to the sacredness of home, family,community and the land.

[Chloe]

Berry writes about universal human truths, framed through simple moments—tied up with complex emotions—observed in a life lived closer to nature.

[Dan Kuras]

Brilliant

[Erin]

wowowowowow

[Stephanie]

Poems I can read while walking and feel carried and rooted at once.

[Ron]

A small book that has some very good poems in it.

[C]

Not Berry's best poetry, but still a charming volume.