Entries: Poems by Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

Entries is Wendell Berry's tenth collection of poems. This remarkable, eclectic gathering of ten years' work offers poems of remembrance and renewal, celebrating life's complexities from the domestic to the eternal. As husband and father, son and citizen, the poet explores with clear sureness his "membership" in his community and in the world. The heart of this collection is a sequence of poems written during Berry's father's final years. From conflict, grief, great loss and great love, there emerges a compassion and understanding: in death and in memory begins immortality.

Genres: Poetry, Christian, Nonfiction, Philosophy

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

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

[Jonfaith]

Five stars for In Extremis, an homage to his father. Wrenchingly beautiful. The rest is more love poem than pastoral, though Berry never quite leaves the farm.

I finished this sitting outside, just before dawn broke. The reader is quite vulnerable to a personal emotive inventory. Be wary.

[Scott Kercheville]

Whether reflecting on his daughter’s wedding, or his father’s old age, or the ignorance that leads our time to destroy everything in demand of better days, Berry’s poetry is thoughtful, simple, and beautiful. Profound but not pretentious.

[Olivia]

"how paltry was my worst, compared to your forgiveness of it"

[Nancy Lewis]

Spring
A shower like a little song
Overtook him going home,
Wet his shoulders, and went on.

[Lucas Miller]

Wendell Berry has been on my shelf and reading list for a long time. A couple collections of essays and Jayber Crow, but I've never read any until this brief collection of poems. I was immediately drawn to the spare language and direct tone. There is a poem near the end of the first section that makes frequent reference to Dr. Williams. That is a good guide to the tone and style. The cluster of political poems have an ache to them, the love poems are form the perspective of age and long lasting relationships, and the final section "In Extremsis" a series of short poems about the final weeks of the author's father were head and shoulder's above anything. One of the better statements of grief and parental love I've read. Maybe I haven't read a collection of poems in awhile, and what I have attempted has felt to opaque. This poem was striking and I am anxious to read more.

[Jim]

Often Wendell Berry writes poems that reflect his life on his Kentucky farm, as they reflect a life that has disappeared most elsewhere.

Berry is close to the land, both farmed and natural. His poems reflect that intimate knowledge and love.

Some of the poems in this collection, especially in Part 2, tell of his protest against the destruction of the natural world by manufactured poisons. These poems, published in 1994, have come to be. These poems are neither subtle nor beautiful.

Part 4 is an extended sequence of poems written about his father. For me, this was the heart and soul of the collection.

[Rick Davis]

There were a couple of ideological clunkers here, but overall the poetry was beautiful. My wife knew when I'd been reading the book by the sniffling and misty eyes. Wendell Berry is just great.

[Brian]

There were many good poems in this collection and very few that I did not want to go back and read again, and again, and again.

[Leah]

Yet another Wendell Berry poetry collection has taken my heart. This collection was lovely to read and it was fun knowing that the poems are a bit older than the ones I have read by Berry in a while. He reflects much on nature, progress of the world, grief, respect for the land/earth, the process of growing old, and deep love, just to name a few. I specifically appreciated the poems he had about the relationship he had with his father, especially as he processes how he took care of his father at the end of his life. Berry's celebration of humanity is prevalent in those lines and this entire collection. I would recommend this collection to all!

[Jim]

I first read Entries about 10 years ago. I like to return to it every now and then. There are some very fine poems in this collection. My favorite is The Blue Robe.

Wendell Berry, along with Donald Hall, and Hall's deceased wife Jane Kenyon, are three of my favorite poets. I list these three together because they all share a strong sense of place, community, and stewardship of the land and nature, but in a very grounded way, not flighty or "New Age-e."

[Sarah]

I have been challenging myself to enjoy poetry as a part of my regular reading rhythm. Delightfully surprised to find a book of Wendell Berry poetry at the library, I brought the book home to examine how the novelist adapted to the poetic form. This can only be described as phenomenal. I read excerpts to my husband and his response was, “Wow. Where did this guy come from?” Worth the time to track down and read.

[Colleen O'Neill Conlan]

It was The Wild Rose that brought me to this collection, and yes, that poem is lovely. The last section is a series of poems about his father: "he was / my enemy...[and] by God / the truest teacher in my life." The last poem, "Come Forth," is a stunner.

[Elizabeth]

“In time’s short light, and less than light,
we pray
That odds be thus made evens,
And earthly love in its uncertain way
Be reconciled with Heaven’s.”
—excerpt from A Marriage Song (1994)


A Parting

From many hard workdays in the fields,
many passages through the woods,
many mornings on the river, lifting
hooked lines out of the dark,
from many nightfalls, many dawns,
on the ridgetops and the creek road,
as upright as a tree, as freely standing,
Arthur Rowanberry comes in his old age
into the care of doctors, into the prison
of technical mercy, disease
and hectic skill making their way
into his body, hungry invaders fighting
for claims in that dark homeland,
strangers touching him, calling his
name,
and so he lies down at last
in a bare room far from home.
And we who know him come
from the places he knew us in, and stand
by his bed, and speak. He smiles
and greets us from another time.
We stand around him like a grove,
a moment’s shelter, old neighborhood
remade in that alien place. But the time
we stand in is not his time.
He is off in the places of his life,
now only places in his mind,
doing what he did in them when they
were
the world’s places, and he the world’s
man:
cutting the winter wood, piling the
brush,
fixing the fences, mending the roofs,
caring for the crops under the long sun,
loading up the wagon, heading home.


To My Mother

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

*New Collected Poems (2012)

[Dave Franklin]

Wendell Berry's “Entries'' includes occasional pieces, political satire and sketches from the natural world. Echoes of Williams and Yeats reverberate, but, taken as a whole, the poems exude a common ethic, a respect for the land and its inhabitants. Overall, Berry speaks with conviction, an outspoken voice in and for the wilderness.

Yet Berry's lapidary observations can be quite precise:

`“Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
Where yesterday was only shade…”

The last section, “In Extremis: Poems about My Father” is a powerful meditation on love and aging. While not as moving as “Clearances,” Seamus Heany’s moving eight-sonnet set dedicated to his mother, Margaret, Berry's writing bears witness to his father's life and legacy:

“In flesh, denying time, will look
At what is lost, and grief fulfill
The budget of desire. Sometimes,
At home, he longs to be at home.''

A concise, interesting collection that is worthy of the reader’s attention.

[Sanjuro]

This collection is broken into four sections. I found the first and third sections to be among the dullest of any of Berry's poems, and I've read nearly all of them. And yet, I found the second and fourth sections to be among Berry's very best, so that the summation is a strange collection of average and forgettable work standing alongside poems of soul stirring, emotionally beauty. The two wonderful sections could not be more different; section two is piercingly political, while section four is an extended elegy about his father. I might go so far as to say that this elegy to his father is the single best and most emotional sequence of poems in Berry's stellar career.

[꩜]

“Let us pledge allegiance to the flag
and to the national sacrifice areas
for which it stands, garbage dumps
and empty holes, sold out for a higher
spire on the rich church, the safety
of voyagers in golf carts, the better mood
of the stock market. Let us feast
today, though tomorrow we starve. Let us
gorge upon the body of the Lord, consuming
the earth for our greater joy in Heaven,
that fair Vacationland. Let us wander forever
in the labyrinths of our self-esteem.
Let us evolve forever toward the higher
consciousness of the machine.
The pool of our engine-driven fate
unwinds, our history now outspeeding
thought, and the heart is a beatable tool.”

[Elise Schiel]

This was the first book of poetry that I’ve ever read. I’ve always been nervous to start reading poetry because I am afraid that I won’t be able to understand what’s being said. But Wendell Berry’s writing is so simple. Astounding, yet simple. Berry makes me long for a better world; even more than a better world, my true home, the Land flowing with milk and honey.

Life is beautiful, life is a miracle, life is short. This world is meant for dust. But I rest assured in the hope that a perfect world will come after.

[Sarah Johnson]

if you provided a marriage feast
and the thankless guests crowded
at the table,gobbling the food
without tasting it, and shoving
one another away, so that some ate
too much and some ate nothing,
would you not be offended?

Or if, seated at your bountiful table,
your guests picked and finicked
over the food,eating only a little,
refusing the wine and the dessert
claiming that to fill their bellies
and rejoice would impair their souls,
would you not be offended?

[Grace Gallo]

In Extremis, poems about his father, wrecked me. I never thought I would voluntarily read poetry, but this was a delight. I love Berry’s honor for humanity, nature, and the divine.

Berry said it best in To Hayden Carruth:
Dear Hayden, when I read your book I was aching
in head, heart, and mind, and aching
with your aches added to my own, and yet for joy
I read on without stopping, made eager
by your true mastery, wit, sorrow, and joy…

[Kayla]

These are such beautiful poems on love, the grace of connection, and loss.

Here is a favorite:

Epitaph

Having lived a long time,
He lives now in timelessness
Without sorrow, made perfect
By our never finished love,
By our compassion and forgiveness,
And by his happiness in receiving
These gifts we give. Here in time
We are added to one another forever.

[Meghan]

Put a lot of pencil in this book. Some favorites - Thirty More Years, The Wild Rose, The Blue Robe, The Reassurer, Let us Pledge, Anglo-saxon Protestant Heterosexual Men, Madness, Duality, In Extremis: Poems About my Father

[Justin]

'The Wild Rose' is (once again) Berry at his best writing about his wife.

'Thirty More Years' and 'Leaving' are two others I very much enjoyed and remember well.

'The Vacation' and 'For the Explainers' are nice little Berry-isms treading familiar ground but in a well executed way.

[Jamie Brame]

First book of Wendell Berry poems I've read. Especially great are the last ones about his father. Moving, deep, even sentimental (but not mushy). Loved these poems. Honest poems.

[Norman Styers]

The best pieces are late in the book.

[Grason Poling]

“‘Look. See that this is good,
And then you will not forget.’
I saw it as he said,
And I have not forgot.”

[Rebecca]

I especially liked the poems toward the end about his father.

[Kaitlin Martin]

Moving. Touching. Enlightening. Invigorating. Devastating. Consuming. And profound.

[Rye Thomasdatter]

This is not my favorite way to consume the Wendell Berry universe.

[Sarah]

Awesome poetry. Along a similar vein as Mary Oliver. Nature abounds & we love her!! He also writes beautifully about losing his father.

[Josephine Mattia]

Wendell Berry is one of my Poetic Influences, so to read this book from him was well done. "Vacation" and The poem between him and his father, deals with a generational gap. Highly recommended.