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Leavings: Poems
No one writes like Wendell Berry. Whether essay, novel, story, or poem, his inimitable voice rings true, as natural as the land he has farmed in Kentucky for over forty years.
Berry’s life is a long witness of love and celebration, and he writes as a poet of deep intimacy with the natural world and the lost heart of our country. With his family and friends, he continues the devotion that had him saying almost thirty years ago, “What I stand for is what I stand on.”
It has been six years since his last volume of poetry, the widely praised Given, and this new collection offers a masterful blend of elegies, lyrics, and letters, with the occasional short love poem. Alternately amused, outraged, and resolved, Berry’s welcome voice is the constant in this varied mix. As he looks back on his long life, his work resonates with a renewed depth. The book concludes with a new sequence of Sabbath poems, works occasioned by Berry’s Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation.
Berry’s life is a long witness of love and celebration, and he writes as a poet of deep intimacy with the natural world and the lost heart of our country. With his family and friends, he continues the devotion that had him saying almost thirty years ago, “What I stand for is what I stand on.”
It has been six years since his last volume of poetry, the widely praised Given, and this new collection offers a masterful blend of elegies, lyrics, and letters, with the occasional short love poem. Alternately amused, outraged, and resolved, Berry’s welcome voice is the constant in this varied mix. As he looks back on his long life, his work resonates with a renewed depth. The book concludes with a new sequence of Sabbath poems, works occasioned by Berry’s Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation.
144 pages, Paperback
First published October 10, 2009
About the author
Wendell Berry
305 books5,455 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 - 30 of 162 reviews
December 12, 2009
Wendell Berry is mad, he has had enough of how things are going. He is not only writing about it, he protested with Bill McKibben and James Hansen at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C. re climate change.
Questionnaire
1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.
2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.
3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.
4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.
5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.
Questionnaire
1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.
2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.
3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.
4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.
5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.
July 17, 2017
Berry's ability to filter love of nature through so many lenses that it never becomes boring or passé is truly awe-inspiring. His seeming antipathy toward anything hinting at technological progress or the human imprint on nature is a little harder to swallow. The difficulty doesn't arise from disagreement with Berry's sentiments (Blake's "dark satanic mills" are indeed hateful and ugly) so much as skepticism toward his conclusions. The agrarian idealism he promotes is great if you can attain it, but there are upwards of seven billion people in the world and not all of them can farm a tract of land in rural Kentucky.
Why is it so hard for the privileged to see their own exceptional circumstances from the perspective of the other half (or the other nine-tenths, more like)? For Wendell Berry, it surely has something to do with his seclusion. I'm not saying he's sequestered; he talks often of flying from place to place, though with a hypocritical distaste that I find amusing—if you hate the effects of airplanes so much, simply refuse to fly in them! More like he takes such delight in his own corner of paradise that he cannot or will not see that the hell he accuses others of creating is inhabited largely by people who don't want to live there but don't have much choice in the matter. This seeming lack of compassion detracts from the genuine beauty of many of these poems.
His rejection of Christian doctrine as such is also troubling, but not for the reasons he cites. In one poem, he talks about the theological criticisms he receives from readers—he's too earthly-minded, he avoids doctrinal distinction, etc. Well, I have no doubt many readers marshal these criticisms from a sense of doctrinal rigidity. But what bothers me isn't where Berry stands on any particular issue—it's that he feels the need, not to distance himself from doctrinal distinctiveness, but to denigrate all such theological precision. If you don't want to be seen as doctrinaire, just say what you want and don't try to defend yourself. Otherwise, you're falling into the very pit you claim others have dug.
All that said, most of the poems in Leavings are quite lovely. Among the best are the poems in which he addressed his wife of more than forty years. He expresses his love for her in a down-to-earth manner that still speaks of his passion and devotion. Berry's refusal to prettify his language is also quite admirable—there are some good lines, but mostly the beauty of these poems rests in the entirety of the expression and sentiment, rather than in its individual parts. At the end of the day, however, I prefer Berry the essayist and novelist to Berry the poet. Perhaps this is because I sense a misuse of the form for political ends, or maybe it's because I'm increasingly drawn to formal poetry and increasingly disillusioned with the limitations of free verse. This volume is good, not great.
Why is it so hard for the privileged to see their own exceptional circumstances from the perspective of the other half (or the other nine-tenths, more like)? For Wendell Berry, it surely has something to do with his seclusion. I'm not saying he's sequestered; he talks often of flying from place to place, though with a hypocritical distaste that I find amusing—if you hate the effects of airplanes so much, simply refuse to fly in them! More like he takes such delight in his own corner of paradise that he cannot or will not see that the hell he accuses others of creating is inhabited largely by people who don't want to live there but don't have much choice in the matter. This seeming lack of compassion detracts from the genuine beauty of many of these poems.
His rejection of Christian doctrine as such is also troubling, but not for the reasons he cites. In one poem, he talks about the theological criticisms he receives from readers—he's too earthly-minded, he avoids doctrinal distinction, etc. Well, I have no doubt many readers marshal these criticisms from a sense of doctrinal rigidity. But what bothers me isn't where Berry stands on any particular issue—it's that he feels the need, not to distance himself from doctrinal distinctiveness, but to denigrate all such theological precision. If you don't want to be seen as doctrinaire, just say what you want and don't try to defend yourself. Otherwise, you're falling into the very pit you claim others have dug.
All that said, most of the poems in Leavings are quite lovely. Among the best are the poems in which he addressed his wife of more than forty years. He expresses his love for her in a down-to-earth manner that still speaks of his passion and devotion. Berry's refusal to prettify his language is also quite admirable—there are some good lines, but mostly the beauty of these poems rests in the entirety of the expression and sentiment, rather than in its individual parts. At the end of the day, however, I prefer Berry the essayist and novelist to Berry the poet. Perhaps this is because I sense a misuse of the form for political ends, or maybe it's because I'm increasingly drawn to formal poetry and increasingly disillusioned with the limitations of free verse. This volume is good, not great.
February 20, 2020
Berry's most naturalistic recent work, and perhaps his most polemical. Its also my favorite of his collections, both for its evocative agrarianism and for its denunciation of modernity. Whatever excesses might be found with Berry's anti-modern ethos are balanced by Berry's admission that modernity itself is not a societal ill; instead, he indicts excesses of modernity.
April 1, 2020
This is my first full collection of Wendell Berry. I've read him here and there, even used part of a poem as my quote of the day, once:
"As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
But this was my first, and he's speaking my language. -Especially right now - I'm writing this on the last day of March, 2020 living under quarantine (or at least social distancing, with everything shut down) and much uncertainty. Part II of the collection is titled "Sabbaths 2005-2008; How may a human being come to rest?"
Well, we're all resting in absurdity right now. Many of us resting at home, but finding ourselves restless. Maybe not sleeping through the night?
His theology and economics are soft spoken, but firm. He stands his ground as we move toward corpocracy and an earth where we've money-mined the carbon from the ground and burned it into a heat-trapping window above us.
Still, I was told recently that Doris Day said "even in the class war, I am a pacifist." I would wager Berry to be a fighter right there with her.
"If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us."
-p.46 (Part II: Sabbaths; 2005, XII)
His theology (he seems to take umbrage at being ascribed one*) is sown with doubt.
Here's a full poem:
If there are a "chosen few"
then I am not one of them,
if an "elect," well then
I have not been elected.
I am one who is knocking
at the door. I am one whose foot
is on the bottom rung.
But I know that Heaven's
bottom rung is Heaven
though the ladder is standing
on the earth where I work
by day and at night sleep
with my head upon a stone.
p. 61 (Part II: Sabbaths; 2006, I)
Truly, though. If he *does* have a theology. It's love, and honest-living. Loving ourselves, others, and creation.
A LETTER
(to my brother)
Dear John,
You said, "Treat your enemies
as if they could become your best friends."
You were not the first to perpetrate
such an outrage, but you were right.
Try as we might, we cannot
unspring this trap. We can either
befriend our enemies or we can die
with them, in the absolute triumph
of the absolute horror constructed
by us to save us from them.
Tough, but "All right" our Mary said,
"we'll be nice to the sons of bitches."
-p. 10
XIII
Greed is finally being recognized as a virtue...
the best engine of betterment known to man."
-William Safire, 1986
By its own logic, greed
finally destroys itself,
as Lear's wicked daughters
learned to their horror, as
we are learning to our own.
What greed builds is built
by destruction of the materials
and lives of which it is built.
Only mourners survive.
This is the "creative destruction"
of which learnèd economists
speak in praise. But what is made
by destruction comes down at last
to a stable floor, a bed
of straw, and for those with sight
light in darkness.
p. 124 (Part II: Sabbaths; 2008, XIII)
*"Having written some pages in favor of Jesus,
I receive a solemn communication crediting me
with the possession of a "theology" by which
I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong
forever or right forever. Have I gauged exactly
enough the weights of sins? Have I found
too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or
the other way around? Have I..."
"As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
But this was my first, and he's speaking my language. -Especially right now - I'm writing this on the last day of March, 2020 living under quarantine (or at least social distancing, with everything shut down) and much uncertainty. Part II of the collection is titled "Sabbaths 2005-2008; How may a human being come to rest?"
Well, we're all resting in absurdity right now. Many of us resting at home, but finding ourselves restless. Maybe not sleeping through the night?
His theology and economics are soft spoken, but firm. He stands his ground as we move toward corpocracy and an earth where we've money-mined the carbon from the ground and burned it into a heat-trapping window above us.
Still, I was told recently that Doris Day said "even in the class war, I am a pacifist." I would wager Berry to be a fighter right there with her.
"If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us."
-p.46 (Part II: Sabbaths; 2005, XII)
His theology (he seems to take umbrage at being ascribed one*) is sown with doubt.
Here's a full poem:
If there are a "chosen few"
then I am not one of them,
if an "elect," well then
I have not been elected.
I am one who is knocking
at the door. I am one whose foot
is on the bottom rung.
But I know that Heaven's
bottom rung is Heaven
though the ladder is standing
on the earth where I work
by day and at night sleep
with my head upon a stone.
p. 61 (Part II: Sabbaths; 2006, I)
Truly, though. If he *does* have a theology. It's love, and honest-living. Loving ourselves, others, and creation.
A LETTER
(to my brother)
Dear John,
You said, "Treat your enemies
as if they could become your best friends."
You were not the first to perpetrate
such an outrage, but you were right.
Try as we might, we cannot
unspring this trap. We can either
befriend our enemies or we can die
with them, in the absolute triumph
of the absolute horror constructed
by us to save us from them.
Tough, but "All right" our Mary said,
"we'll be nice to the sons of bitches."
-p. 10
XIII
Greed is finally being recognized as a virtue...
the best engine of betterment known to man."
-William Safire, 1986
By its own logic, greed
finally destroys itself,
as Lear's wicked daughters
learned to their horror, as
we are learning to our own.
What greed builds is built
by destruction of the materials
and lives of which it is built.
Only mourners survive.
This is the "creative destruction"
of which learnèd economists
speak in praise. But what is made
by destruction comes down at last
to a stable floor, a bed
of straw, and for those with sight
light in darkness.
p. 124 (Part II: Sabbaths; 2008, XIII)
*"Having written some pages in favor of Jesus,
I receive a solemn communication crediting me
with the possession of a "theology" by which
I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong
forever or right forever. Have I gauged exactly
enough the weights of sins? Have I found
too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or
the other way around? Have I..."
March 13, 2012
LIKE SNOW
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
Lovely, isn't it? I've never read Wendell Berry before. I was pleased to see how attuned I am to his work. Part of it may be the South he writes about and is influenced by as well as the bucolic nature of his attentions. Another factor is that he thinks Kentucky but always with a cosmic and human perspective rather than concerning himself with the social or political thing Kentucky is. These poems are about man's place in nature and how that creates a character of the sacred. These are meditative pieces. In fact, I understand those from the section entitled "Sabbaths 2005-2008" are inspired by Sunday walks. I imagine he casts his seeing into the landscapes as he walks, reeling in thoughts on how relatively small sightings reflect the larger world while at the same time clarifying the even larger interior of the man. To walk with Berry is to walk in a sweeping yet embraced mental landscape.
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
Lovely, isn't it? I've never read Wendell Berry before. I was pleased to see how attuned I am to his work. Part of it may be the South he writes about and is influenced by as well as the bucolic nature of his attentions. Another factor is that he thinks Kentucky but always with a cosmic and human perspective rather than concerning himself with the social or political thing Kentucky is. These poems are about man's place in nature and how that creates a character of the sacred. These are meditative pieces. In fact, I understand those from the section entitled "Sabbaths 2005-2008" are inspired by Sunday walks. I imagine he casts his seeing into the landscapes as he walks, reeling in thoughts on how relatively small sightings reflect the larger world while at the same time clarifying the even larger interior of the man. To walk with Berry is to walk in a sweeping yet embraced mental landscape.
February 7, 2022
I find this one hard to rate because I loved some poems and really did not like others . . .
January 10, 2025
The sort of book to return to again and again. A lifelong treasure and literary masterpiece.
September 3, 2024
Rating: 3.25
A collection of poems on nature, faith, love, society, growing older - Berry's personal introspections on paper for our benefit. I struggled to remain engaged in a book of poetry, but every so often Berry's words would wake me up from my slumber and bring me to attention.
My favorite poem from Leavings
LIKE SNOW
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
A collection of poems on nature, faith, love, society, growing older - Berry's personal introspections on paper for our benefit. I struggled to remain engaged in a book of poetry, but every so often Berry's words would wake me up from my slumber and bring me to attention.
My favorite poem from Leavings
LIKE SNOW
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
June 12, 2024
Wendell Berry's poetry is a liturgy for home, creation, nature, faith, work, wisdom, and simplicity. He writes with clarity and simple beauty, which reminds me of the form and style of American poet, Robert Frost. Berry's voice is authentic and clear, inspiring in his readers pensive reflection and deep-seated wonder.
September 5, 2015
"In our consciousness of time
we are doomed to the past
The future we may dream of
but can only know it after
it has come and gone.
The present too we know
only as the past. When
we say "This now is
present, the heat, the breeze,
the rippling water," it is past.
Before we knew it, before
we said "now" it was gone.
If the only time we live
is the present, and if the present
is immeasurably short (or
long), then by the measure
of the measurers we don't
exist at all, which seems
improbable, or we are
immortals, living always
in eternity, as from time to time
we hear, but rarely know."
A collection of some very thoughtful poems - about the land, nature, time, love, the shame of progress and the loss of value and relationship. I wasn't able to get into them all, but there were several that stuck. Berry doesn't write quotables - his stuff isn't easily summed up in a line - it takes the full poem to convey his thought, and no less. This must be the way the man is himself. I like it. These poems are not clever showpieces, they are long thoughts.
we are doomed to the past
The future we may dream of
but can only know it after
it has come and gone.
The present too we know
only as the past. When
we say "This now is
present, the heat, the breeze,
the rippling water," it is past.
Before we knew it, before
we said "now" it was gone.
If the only time we live
is the present, and if the present
is immeasurably short (or
long), then by the measure
of the measurers we don't
exist at all, which seems
improbable, or we are
immortals, living always
in eternity, as from time to time
we hear, but rarely know."
A collection of some very thoughtful poems - about the land, nature, time, love, the shame of progress and the loss of value and relationship. I wasn't able to get into them all, but there were several that stuck. Berry doesn't write quotables - his stuff isn't easily summed up in a line - it takes the full poem to convey his thought, and no less. This must be the way the man is himself. I like it. These poems are not clever showpieces, they are long thoughts.
May 5, 2018
3.5
September 19, 2025
Loved this read-through, several yellow flags throughout that might be able to be excused because he’s a poet writing poetry. Overall: very, very good.
February 3, 2018
I will be leaving how many beauties over looked?
***
I have not paid enough attention. I have not been grateful enough.
First time reading Mr. Berry. His work took my back 20 Years to a dorm room in North Carolina where I was trying to understand the works of A. R. Ammons. Both are Southern writers and you get the sense that never really left the farm.
***
I have not paid enough attention. I have not been grateful enough.
First time reading Mr. Berry. His work took my back 20 Years to a dorm room in North Carolina where I was trying to understand the works of A. R. Ammons. Both are Southern writers and you get the sense that never really left the farm.
Read
May 17, 2016I find it difficult to give a rating to books of poetry, so I'm refraining this time. I'd read some of Berry's poems in the past and loved them, which inspired me to check out a full book of his work. There are some in here that were really great and resonated with me (I earmarked several pages), as well as some entertaining letters. Others were just too preachy for me, with a message that hits you over the head. I usually prefer a bit more subtlety in poetry, even if I agree with the sentiment. As he says in one of his included poems: "Poem, do not raise your voice. Be a whisper that says 'There!'..."
Despite the few poems I didn't care for, I am inspired to read more of his works, including his fiction. That's always a good thing.
Despite the few poems I didn't care for, I am inspired to read more of his works, including his fiction. That's always a good thing.
January 19, 2010
While more hit-and-miss than some of the Berry's other works, this one contains some lovely love poems both to his wife and to the land. I found in some of the poems that his politics outweighed his word choices- and that's a pity. Taken as a whole, the book is worth reading, but not Berry's best.
Read
June 16, 2021Such writing incites wonder.
Read
September 27, 2025|an embarrassment|
“Do you want to ask the blessing?”
“No. If you do, go ahead.”
He went ahead: his prayer dressed up in Sunday clothes, rose a few feet and dropped with a soft thump. If a lonely soul did ever cry out in company its true outcry to God, it would be as though at a sedate party a man suddenly removed his clothes and took his wife passionately into his arms.
|Like snow|
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
|While attending the annual convocation of cause theorists and bigbangists at the local provincial research university, the mad farmer intercedes from the back row…|
…Did the chance that made the bang then make the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help? Prove to me that chance did ever make a sycamore tree, a yellow-throated warbler nesting and singing high up among the white limbs and the golden leaf-light, and a man to love the tree, the bird, the song his life long, and by his love to save them, so far, from all machines. By chance? Prove it, then, and I by chance will kiss your ass.
I.
I know that I have life only insofar as I have love.
I have no love except it come from Thee.
Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind.
XV.
…And these were Heavenly because he never saw them clear enough to satisfy his love, his need to see them all again, again.
XII.
Learn by little the desire for all things which perhaps is not desire at all but undying love which perhaps is not love at all but gratitude for the being of all things which perhaps is not gratitude at all but the maker’s joy in what is made, the joy in which we come to rest.
XI.
…Still the world persisted in its beauty, he in his gratitude, and for this he had most earnestly prayed.
Slay, Wendell, slay. (AA here. Those are my words.)
“Do you want to ask the blessing?”
“No. If you do, go ahead.”
He went ahead: his prayer dressed up in Sunday clothes, rose a few feet and dropped with a soft thump. If a lonely soul did ever cry out in company its true outcry to God, it would be as though at a sedate party a man suddenly removed his clothes and took his wife passionately into his arms.
|Like snow|
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
|While attending the annual convocation of cause theorists and bigbangists at the local provincial research university, the mad farmer intercedes from the back row…|
…Did the chance that made the bang then make the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help? Prove to me that chance did ever make a sycamore tree, a yellow-throated warbler nesting and singing high up among the white limbs and the golden leaf-light, and a man to love the tree, the bird, the song his life long, and by his love to save them, so far, from all machines. By chance? Prove it, then, and I by chance will kiss your ass.
I.
I know that I have life only insofar as I have love.
I have no love except it come from Thee.
Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind.
XV.
…And these were Heavenly because he never saw them clear enough to satisfy his love, his need to see them all again, again.
XII.
Learn by little the desire for all things which perhaps is not desire at all but undying love which perhaps is not love at all but gratitude for the being of all things which perhaps is not gratitude at all but the maker’s joy in what is made, the joy in which we come to rest.
XI.
…Still the world persisted in its beauty, he in his gratitude, and for this he had most earnestly prayed.
Slay, Wendell, slay. (AA here. Those are my words.)
September 4, 2026
This was my first Wendell Barry book and I was hooked. He has such a wonderful way of looking at the world. I rated this collection with 4 instead of 5 stars because many of the poems emphasize pacifism, a rather Amish hatred of technology, and one poem characterized theological discussions as something that belongs in Hell. Leavings was still worth reading and had many wonderful poems in it, but I expect to enjoy his other collections more.
August 23, 2018
Inspiring poems by a writer I have read for many years - essays, poetry, stories. His passion for nature is evident throughout. The second half are his Sabbath poems; poems of meditation and observation that he creates when he takes his regular Sunday morning walks. His elderly age is reflected in many of the thoughts of this book.
August 10, 2021
7/31 #TheSealeyChallenge
Wendell Berry speaks such truth with such beauty.
"Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end."
Wendell Berry speaks such truth with such beauty.
"Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end."
December 5, 2024
The first section of this book spoke more to me than the later ones, mainly due to the fact that in the later sections the pieces are numbered rather than titled and I am a sucker for a good title.
This is my first experience with Berry tho he has been on my TBR for years. I think the later pieces are what I was kind of expecting in that they were a little harder to find something to grasp onto.
I was pleasantly surprised by the first section’s whimsy and would def pick up more from this author.
This is my first experience with Berry tho he has been on my TBR for years. I think the later pieces are what I was kind of expecting in that they were a little harder to find something to grasp onto.
I was pleasantly surprised by the first section’s whimsy and would def pick up more from this author.
January 28, 2020
I loved this in spite of his religious nature, maybe even in part because of it. I love the way he sees the world and all its sharp awfulness, but can still appreciate the beauty of a quiet day. The poem "Questionnaire" gave me chills and reminded me of Sylvain Neuvel's novel The Test.
July 29, 2024
i love sir wendell but these poems didn’t super resonate with me. i prefer timbered choir but mostly prefer his prose i think!
February 4, 2025
Wendell Berry 🤝 MAHA
February 28, 2026
In poems as rich and resonant as scripture, Berry dwells upon the collective sin of our time: greed, and laments its impact on that which sustains life.
December 26, 2021
Beautiful collection of poems
March 30, 2019
This is my first foray into Wendell Berry's writings. I read this book of poetry in small increments, about five minutes each morning. I was able to dwell on it for the remainder of the day. I think it is a good approach. Poetry is meant to be considered and savored, not engulfed. I enjoyed the words, imagery, and messages.
September 13, 2022
Though I was hoping for more from the sabbath poems, the first series of poems were fantastic. I particularly enjoyed “Look It Over”, “A Letter (to my brother)”’ and “Questionnaire”.
October 1, 2022
I enjoyed this collection because it was divided into different years, and as time went on, the language and content would shift from more natural scenes to more industrial ones. I enjoyed reading about that change which is very present in today’s society.
“It falls as rain. To the watcher
on the shore, it comes and it
goes
The immeasurable, untestable,
irrecoverable moment of its passing
is the present, always already
past before we can say that it is
present, that it was the future
flowing into the past or is
the past flowing into the future
or both at once into the present
that is ever-passing and eternal,
the instantaneous, abounding life” (101)
“It falls as rain. To the watcher
on the shore, it comes and it
goes
The immeasurable, untestable,
irrecoverable moment of its passing
is the present, always already
past before we can say that it is
present, that it was the future
flowing into the past or is
the past flowing into the future
or both at once into the present
that is ever-passing and eternal,
the instantaneous, abounding life” (101)
January 26, 2018
Although there are some moments of beauty and profundity within, Wendell Berry manages to say the same thing hundreds of different ways in this work. This bored me.
The concepts range from "Industry, business, and all human progress is bad. We should all be farmers or sleepy cows." or "All old people are wise." or "Environment above every other thing."
Some of these concepts I even agree with in part. However, I don't like to read them over and over in clumsy poems.
This work didn't inspire me to write, to read further, to stretch my soul or my thought. It inspired me to sleep. It inspired me to hate all manmade progress. This is philosophy for hibernation, for regression.
The concepts range from "Industry, business, and all human progress is bad. We should all be farmers or sleepy cows." or "All old people are wise." or "Environment above every other thing."
Some of these concepts I even agree with in part. However, I don't like to read them over and over in clumsy poems.
This work didn't inspire me to write, to read further, to stretch my soul or my thought. It inspired me to sleep. It inspired me to hate all manmade progress. This is philosophy for hibernation, for regression.
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