Wendell BerryRezensionen

In this 2nd volume, LOA attempts to present Mr. Berry's views of preserving the environment not through science but with practical application with sensible methods such as in agriculture & rural farming. It is in the sense in contrast to those who have no training in environmental or even know what it means in practical terms. Perhaps Mr. Berry's work should be heeded more & less reliance on politicians & pundits who have only their mouth.

These poems are very personal. As in, they are all very specific to Wendell Berry. They are all told from the viewpoint of a man, specifically Wendell Berry. They are very specific to a place, eastern Kentucky. There is very little universality to be found here. And I'm confident that Berry would say that is both all right and somewhat the point.
From an artistic and technical standpoint, there are images and metaphors used many times in different poems. There is just a feeling of sameness across the collection. I cannot recommend it.

This book is billed as Berry's thoughts on race relations in 21st century America. And it is that, but only in part, and a smaller-than-expected part, at that. The book suffers from an infelicitous examination and defense of Robert E. Lee. I found Berry's points there less than convincing. I was tempted to abandon the book at that point. But I stuck with it and was rewarded in the final third.
The audiobook reader, Nick Offerman, is the perfect voice for Berry's work, IMO.

Based on the samples on Audible, I just could not summon the enthusiasm to commit to Berry's novels, even though they are praised by people whose opinions I respect and usually share. Then I saw this collection of essays written by Berry between the mid-60s and 2014, and read by Nick Offerman (who, I knew, is a fan of Berry's).

There are essays in here which I wish everyone could/would read. Berry brings a perspective not often heard in this country anymore. It is one he holds with a grounded (but not rabid) conviction and consistency across multiple decades. And he delivers his well-reasoned thoughts with a precision of language which leaves me in awe. Do yourself a favor: read this book.

This book touched my own memories and experiences in a way that I know it would not for anyone who has no experience of farm life. And now, having read this one, I feel relatively certain I don't have to read any more in the series. Not because the writing is lacking. Far from it. But I get the impression that the other books will be more of the same sort of interlocking stories of the characters appearing here.

This little book is written in stunning beauty. The words are elegant and though the story is short and simple, it feels rich. Though the story is one about a mouse caught in a flood, it does not resort to anthropomorphism, which is refreshing, and still managed to capture my 5 year old's attention and interest. I was worried that since it had no dragons or wizards or hero's with swords he would not be interested, but he quietly listened and talked about it the next day.

The first casualties of exploitation are character and community. Wendell Berry

This was a prophetic book in 77 and it's still a sobering read today, given that our alienation from the land, our embrace of specialization resulting in food sources that are less resistant to blight, pests, invasive species, drought or any of the challenges faced by farmers. The book bears reading even for an audience not familiar with agriculture because of the broader picture - that a society accepting of exploitation of land and natural resources tends to be accepting of the exploitation of people. Berry's exploration of the margins, of the healing and regeneration needed between growing cycles, and of the necessity of diversity are lessons that address many wrongs still being committed not only by agribusiness but any industry that commodifies what once was considered a part of the membership of the community.

Too dense for me to concentrate on right now. Also consisted of reviews of writings by authors I haven’t read.

Berry has an incredible skill for writing about things we've all felt, but they sound both new and familiar in his prose. Jayber tells his own story about his life, particularly his time as barber in Port William, Kentucky. Through the years he watches dramas unfold from his solitary place. He sees how time changes the community, deals with his own heartbreak, hatred, and struggles with faith. It is a book that flows slowly and should be savored. Nothing big happens and yet all of life is packed within its pages.

"All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be."

“I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.”

“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”

This essay collection is ordered into 3 sections - the first includes a couple of poems, which I couldn't have cared less about. The second includes book reviews, etc., that reference other people's work. While these had interesting thoughts in them, I imagine readers would be better pleased if they were familiar with the books and authors discussed.

The last section is an assortment of stand-alone essays, and these are what I really liked most.

I've recorded so many good quotes related to education, work, economics, environmentalism, community, etc.

It's definitely worth a read!

Note: There is some mild, infrequent profanity.

Wonderful and real novel about death.

I picked up a book because a friend thinks Wendell Berry is the best. I can't speak to that, but it took me a couple of years to plod through this book. The writing in the essays isn't bad, per se, just pretty dense. I'm not sure who it was written for: academics? ag policy wonks? passionate students who need some realism? Certainly not for me, but perhaps it's because I've spent my whole live knowing most of the problems detailed herein. Who doesn't know that agribusiness completely ignores the means to rebuild the soil, find a balance with insects, grow healthy food without pesticides, allow farmers to earn a decent living? And for those who don't, I'm not sure they'll be convinced by quoting an early 1900's farmer, or lines from Spenser's "The Faierie Queene". OK, this review is biased because I've forgotten what was included in the 1st part of the book, it's been so long since I read that. His discussion of 7 Amish farms might still be persuasive.

Summary: A collection of essays representing a cross-section on Berry’s critique of America’s consumptive culture as well as his ideas on good agriculture.

I suspect I am not the only one who thinks that all of Wendell Berry’s essays are just variations on a theme. But two things make “variations on a theme” either banale or briliant–the beauty of the theme and the skill of the composer. In the case of Berry, the theme is the utterly essential theme of living well in our place–our own patch of land, our community, our country, our planet. The variations include the disciplines that have shaped how we live in our place, the need to think little and local, the illusions of our industrial dreams, and the value of literacy and the importance of the language that we use.

The main entrée of the collection is an eleven part extended essay titled “Discipline and Hope.” Berry considers the various expressions of the industrial, exploitive disciplines of our technology–our focus on efficiency, consumption, the ways we abstract from the practical realities of the land. He contrasts our linear vision of progress with the cycles of birth, growth, fruit, decline, and death by which the earth is renewed each year. He calls for us to embrace at-one-ment.

He lays the basis for this in his opening essay, “A Secular Pilgrimage,” observing the seeming hatred of the creation by those professing belief in the Creator of all things, contrasting it with the testimony of “secular” nature poets who viewed the world with awe. This is followed by the appetizer of “Absence and Return,” in which he describes returning home from the West Coast and the renewed awareness as he walks his land that “everything is supposedly named and numbered and priced, are unlikely to know what lies out of sight of the paved roads.” Then we have a “sweet” essay paying tribute to another of those nature poets, William Carlos Williams, whose work he describes as “a sustained and intricate act of patriotism in the largest sense of that word.”

The final two appetizers offer complementary tastes, perhaps salad dishes, around the idea of thinking local in “The Regional Motive” and “Think Little.” The latter essay first appeared in The Last Whole Earth Catalog and challenges the slogan to “Think Big.” He contends that while we are organizing trash cleanups, we need to pick some up ourselves, turn off lights, lower the thermostat, and refuse to buy the latest electric gadget, and grow some of your own food. “The Regional Motive” challenges our nomadic drive with one that stays home and lives in a way that preserves land for those who follow us.

Following the main essay, Berry offers two desserts that leave the taste of the whole meal with us. One, “In Defense of Literacy” argues for the practicality of literacy and the awareness of the importance of the words we use to describe what Charles Taylor calls our “social imaginary.” The other, “Mayhem in the Industrial Paradise” illustrates with the strip mining of Kentucky the philosophy playing out throughout the country of narrow measures of efficiency and profit that do not account for the people displaced, the soil polluted, the rivers ruined that cost as much or more to restore as the profits of the companies who inflicted these losses without requiring them to repay.

What is served up here is a wholesome country meal of Wendell Berry essays. Admittedly, some of the cultural references are dated, but people have turned up their noses to the hearty meal, preferring industrial fast food, as it were, to the wholesome messages in these essays. So, while the cultural references are dated, the underlying truths are not, and if anything, more desperately needed today. Everyone is still looking for technological fixes to our climate crisis that will allow us to preserve our consumptive lives. We have not heard Wendell Berry’s message calling us to a different way of living in our world, to a wholesome feast that is in “continuious harmony” with the life of our world.

an essay written 30 years ago that is much more relevant today; even though I didn't agree with every point he made, it was still a very interesting and thought-provoking read.

We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only a few years, after all) to ‘need.’

While Berry is a revered writer, this was my first read of his books. I found the lack of events almost boring. The day-to-day life was interesting to read, but I didn't really identify with any of the characters to make me enjoy this book and want to read more of his works. His style is too calm and plain. While a quote or two might be useful for me to think about, the entire read was not exceptional.

Summary: Twenty essays articulating an agrarian vision for society that offers health to land, food, and the wider society.

If you have followed Wendell Berry over the years, you probably have encountered most of the essays in this collection in other works. In this collection, edited by professor of theology and environmental writer, Norman Wirzba, we are given twenty essays that articulate Berry’s vision for the reform of agricultural practice and what that can mean for food, for the land, for local communities, and the health of the wider society. Wirzba’s fine introductory essay underscores key themes of Berry’s writing: that an agrarian vision focused on wholeness with the earth, each other, and God simply reflects a proper understanding of our place in the world and that is significant for all of society, both rural and urban.

The essays are grouped into five sections with a brief introduction to each. The first is “A Geobiography” and consists of a single essay, Berry’s early “A Native Hill.” and is Berry’s description of the history, topography of the upland on which his farm and community is situated. the evidence in pastures and old walls of those who farmed there before him, his many walks over it, through forests, hollows, the soil, and his own place in all of this.

Part Two, “Understanding Our Cultural Crisis” connects our cultural crisis to agricultural practices. He speaks of the harm to land when we make food a “weapon” and pursue endless growth. He challenges “Big Thinking” suggesting we need to “Think Little,” planting our own gardens, and focusing our production within our communities rather than importing energy and exporting produce and waste. He observes the seemingly intractable problem of racism, aggravated when agricultural was industrialized and the “competent poor” able to subsist on the land were forced into our cities for which they were not prepared. In “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine” he explores how separating work from the household has changed marital relationships. Where once couples worked together, indeed families, in the work of a household, what is shared now in marriage is little more than the marriage bed. In this he also defends the way he and his wife work together as she edits his handwritten work, not as an act of subordination, but shared work in the body, believing they are better without computers.

Part Three offers the positive counter to the preceding negative critique in “The Agrarian Basis for American Culture.” This begins with a long essay on “The Body and the Earth.” Berry challenges the ways we divide up the body medically and the dualism of soul and body that downplays the vital importance of our embodied, material existence. He returns to how this plays out in sexual relations, households, and our changing ideals of fidelity which includes our fidelity to the place of our shared life. These ideas recur in “Men and Women in Search of Common Ground” considering how place, shared work, and community sustained the fabric of fidelity between couples. He asks questions about our health care system including why rest, food, and ecological health are not basic to our approaches to staying healthy and to healing. He maintains that key to restoring community is restoring local community and the respect of the differences of different communities. “People, Land, and Community” uses the example (again) of the hillside farm, and how the skillful, multi-generational work of a community is required to preserve that land.

Part Four focuses on “Agrarian Economics.” He writes of the problems of relentless competition for agriculture, and the destruction of pleasure in work, leading to our vapid pleasure industries. The first essay, “Economy and Pleasure” closes with Berry spending a day doing farm chores with his grand-daughter, letting her drive the team, unloading dirt on a barn floor, at the end of which she said, “Wendell, isn’t it fun.” In “The Two Economies” he contrast our industrial economy where we create value with the Great Economy, which recognizes the inherent value in things and what is lost when they are used–soil for example. “The Idea of a Local Economy” is perhaps Berry’s clearest articulation of how the Global Economy has been destructive of the local, and how his vision of what a local economy built on neighborhood and subsistence would look like. “Solving for Pattern” includes a list of farming and land use practices that preserve farm economies..

The book closes with “Agrarian Religion,” in which Berry makes more explicit the theological convictions that undergird his agrarian vision. Interestingly, the section begins with “The Use of Energy,” citing our sewage systems and the internal combustion engine as two prime examples of wastefulness. Good energy use recycles into the environment in a cycle of production, consumption, and return. He reads Genesis 1 as “The Gift of Good Land” to be stewarded with the care with which we’d handle the sacrament, not desecrating it. He affirms that the charges by conservationist against Christianity are, by and large, warranted. He criticizes the focus on the holiness of churches but not on the holiness of all of life and the dualism that denigrates the body rather than understanding our souls as dust plus the breath of life from God. This leads us to deny the goodness of physical work and to be indifferent to the physical creation. Like the economy we are concerned with relentless growth. He also articulates the political captivity of the church that has risen to extremes in our own day. It is a trenchant critique from a churchman.

In one sense, the final essay brings together all he has been saying as he discusses “The Pleasure of Eating.” He urges urban audiences to “eat responsibly.” This simple act, followed to its logical conclusions addresses all the concerns discussed here. As we can we grow our own food, prepare our own food, learn the origins of what we buy and buy food grown as close as possible, dealing with local growers where possible. We become aware and wary of what is added to food, learn about the best farming and keep learning by observation. Eating responsibly, we become reluctant to eat food, animal or vegetable, that has been grown under poor conditions.

These essays challenge us to think of agriculture not as a reality separate from the daily existence of most of us but rather the bedrock on which that existence rests. They challenge us to see that the health of our bodies and our culture cannot be separated from our agriculture, and our highly industrialized agriculture has put the fabric of our communities and our health at risk. Berry focuses so much on local community, but I wonder if these have been so decimated that it will take several generations to restore them. I wonder if a beginning is to think about seeing states or regions become as self-sufficient as possible in agriculture, reducing long distance logistics and diversifying local production and in the process, improving land use and crop rotation. In my own part of the country, studying how the Amish do (and prosper) might be helpful. But what will ultimately drive this is the idea of eating responsibly. That will require a different agricultural economy. And if Berry is right, it will change our culture.

Summary: A compilation of several volumes of Berry’s sabbath poems.

We learn in the preface and introduction to these poems that they were composed by Wendell Berry during his Sabbaths, which he observed each Sunday. He tells us that many of them were written out of doors. Some of the poems even record Berry reclining in the woods near his home and falling asleep. Some, as the introductory poem suggests, were written looking out the window from his study, looking down the sloping property that is his farm to the river that flows into the Ohio.

He records the work of caring for the healing of his sloping lands. He writes in the introduction of having hoped the pasture would revert to forest, but rather his ewes ate the tree saplings. Instead, he tends the pasture in 2005, X “Mowing the hillside pasture–where.” He describes the Queen Anne’s lace, the milkweeds, butterflies, voles, and the contours of the healing slopes for which “He sweats and gives thanks.” In the next poem he speaks of imparting these experiences to his grandson, remembering when he was the young boy waving to an old workman in a pasture.

It is little wonder with someone so committed to the attentive care of his land that many of the poems celebrate the wonders he observes on his farm or the neighboring woods and streams. In 1998, IV, “The woods and pastures are joyous” describes the coming of another spring, the sheep and cattle “like souls in bliss,” the abundant growth and birdsong, and asks, “Who now can believe in winter? In winter who could have hoped for this?”

It also wouldn’t be Wendell Berry if he weren’t decrying the destruction of the land. His poems of 2007 describe this and his struggle to hold onto hope. He returns to his own land and finds hope amid the hopelessness in the renewal of life he witnesses.

Some of the poems are in the voice of characters from his novels, the Port William Membership, including Andy Catlett, Burley Coulter, and Jayber Crow. In others, he speaks of himself in the third person, as in 2011, VII,”A man who loves the trees” where he walks among his “elders” when he sees “a dogwood flower-white lighting all the woods.” In some, he adopts the voice of the Mad Farmer, as in the concluding poem of the collection, 2012, XXI, “As a child, the Mad Farmer saw easily” recounting the captivating vision of the star and the angelic host announcing the Christ child to shepherds that captivated him as a child, fading in the horrors of modernity and fears for what is to come. Yet as a pilgrim, “He sets out.”

I was surprised by the number of poems remembering friends who have died and reflecting on his own advancing years. In 2005, VII, Berry makes an observation that would find many of us nodding our heads in agreement: “I know I am getting old and I say so/but I don’t think of myself as an old man./I think of myself as a young man/with unforeseen debilities.”

Some of the most touching poems are those marking anniversaries and talking about what it is like for two people to love one another in all the ways couples love for many years. He celebrates the power of the marriage vow in 2009, VI “Our vow is the plumb line.” It is a line that seems to separate as both speak, “but vanishing as only we two know when we indeed are one.”

A final theme recurring in many poems is Berry’s piety. He doesn’t “wear this on his sleeve,” filling his poems with references to faith, When he speaks, it is powerful as in these six lines from 2005, 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."

Berry advises, “I hope some readers will read them as they were written: slowly, and with more patience than effort.” A friend who has read this collected comments that she loved taking these on sabbath walks, and reading and pondering one each sabbath. That may be a good approach to these poems that direct our thoughts to the most important matters of our lives as well as the sheer wonder amid which we move, that we often miss in our distraction and hurry. But then, is this not why we sabbath?

would be five stars but The Body and the Earth is one of the most boring things i’ve ever read

Wendell Berry’s Port William novels depict a Kentucky farming community over the course of the 20th century. A Place on Earth was a relatively late entrant to the series, but is set during World War II and features both characters and plot elements from other novels. This is not in the least bit repetitive; instead it adds depth and new perspective. The most notable of these is the story of a young man serving overseas. An earlier novel is written from his wife’s point of view; this time, we see how his parents cope with his absence. This book also celebrates farm work in a less mechanized era, and the strength of a community that is truly there for one another.

The Port William novels are quiet, contemplative, and often moving. I’ve now finished the series, and will need to explore Berry’s short story collections to stay connected with Port William.½

Wendell Berry's stories are always a delight, with his interconnected tales of Port William, a small farming community where everyone knows everyone else and life moves at a leisurely pace. This collection of 30 stories are chock full of characters that will be old friends to Berry's readers. Each story is a delightful respite from the hectic pace of modern life. My only complaint is that, at 475 pages, it was a bit on the long side. Of course, the only solution to that is to break up the book into two volumes and charge readers twice as much. I suspect, though, that that isn't Berry's style.

In Remembering, one of Wendell Berry’s Port William novels, Andy Catlett has traveled from Port William to San Francisco to speak at a conference on farming. It is 1976 and Andy (whom readers met as a boy and young man in previous novels) is now a middle-aged father and recently lost his right hand in a farming accident. He has recovered physically but not psychologically, and this has put significant strain on his marriage. And then he finds himself in a lecture hall, listening to “suits” droning on about modern-day farming practices, and he just can’t stand it. He sets his prepared remarks aside and speaks from his heart, which isn’t necessarily popular with the audience and the conference organizers.

After this episode, Andy wakes up in a cold sweat in his hotel room and heads out into the early morning for a long walk around San Francisco, filled with ruminations and memories. These vignettes paint a picture of Andy’s adult life, and also remind us of Port William, its people, and a way of life that was disappearing then and by today has faded into even more obscurity. And yet, Andy’s reflections during his walk and on his journey home also have a ray of hope, at least for Andy himself if not for rural America.½

Life story of Jonah Crow, nicknamed Jayber, barber of the small farming community of Port William, Kentucky, from his birth in 1914 to his life in retirement. He is orphaned at an early age, briefly attends divinity school, and eventually makes his home above his barbershop. He remains a bachelor but cherishes a woman from afar. The narrative follows the intersecting lives of Jayber and the various residents of Port William.

This is a classic celebration of the pastoral life. It is critical of industrialization. Farmer Athey Keith uses traditional farming methods – plowing with mules, rotating crops, and saving funds for emergencies. His son-in-law, Troy Chatham, represents the modern approach to “agribusiness,” borrowing heavily, buying machines, and depleting the land.

Jayber tells his own story, so we are privy to his thoughts. He questions religion and theology, leading to his departure from seminary school, but values faithful devotion and always cares about those around him, even to the point of embracing people he dislikes (not always successfully). The concept of heaven is also explored.

The characters are richly developed. By the end, I felt like they were my neighbors. Jayber’s voice is particularly strong. It felt like an older relative telling me his nostalgic stories. Berry’s writing is lyrical. There are passages that made me want to soak them in and ponder them for a while. The story is chronological, and proceeds at a leisurely pace. Most of the plot describes small-town life, farming, and community connections.

“Maybe you can imagine it: the moon hanging all alone out in the sky, its light pouring down over everything and filling the valley, and under the moonlight the woods, making a darkness, and within the darkness a little room of firelight, and within the firelight several men talking, some standing, some sitting on stools of piled rocks or on logs, some sitting or squatting or kneeling around a spot swept clear of leaves where they were playing cards, and all around you could hear the whippoorwills. Nearly everybody there had a coal oil lantern, most of them unlit to save oil. One of the two or three that were lighted hung from a low limb to illuminate the card game.”

Themes include belonging, independence, dealing with change, and the joys of living a simple life. Berry advocates stewardship of the earth and compassion for its inhabitants. I enjoyed spending time in Port William and found this book delightful.

I read Wendell Berry’s The Memory of Old Jack when it came out in paperback in 1985. It was an experience I never forgot. I passed the book on to my father and brother to read. I found it on my dad’s bookshelf after he died. Over the years, I remember reading Berry’s poetry and some non-fiction books. How did I miss all of the Port William fiction? I was living in small towns, and it was before Internet access, and I had a child. Reading How It Went, I hope to return to the novels about these characters.

The world Berry writes about was not my world. It was disappearing while my dad was a teenager. Berry’s Andy Catlett was a teenager in the 1940s, as was my dad. Port William was still farmland, before the mechanization of farming. As a teen, my dad helped out the neighboring farmer John Kuhn, driving his tractor. Photographs of Kuhn and his farm from decades before that show the world Andy grew up in. By the time of my birth, post-war housing had sprung up on the farmland.

The stories in How It Went are beautifully written. There is humor and sadness, and great nostalgia for a kind of community that has disappeared. A place that had shared stories, where people helped each other. But there is also prejudice and judgement. From the perspective of old age, Andy understands the beauty of the old world and how quickly it disappeared. Now, most of his friends are “in the graveyard on the hill.” Who is left to remember, to tell their stories?

We were telling of course the story, clearly ongoing and with no foreseeable end, of the departure of the people and the coming of the machines.
from How It Went by Wendell Berry

the boy Andy wants nothing more than to do a man’s work. He attaches to hired hand Dick, who he greatly loved and admired, and who patiently taught him the quiet pride of workmanship. His grandmother told him the stories of the past while he longs to escape outdoors. His father longed to be a full time farmer, but unable to make ends met becomes a lawyer to pay the bills.

Farmers warn against purchasing farming machines, against borrowing money which could be a trap to lose everything. Several years of bad harvest and you can’t pay back the loan, and you lose the farm.

The stories are an elegy to time gone, the end of a way of life. Andy understands that the stories were disappearing as fewer remembered them. “I see that we are passing through this world like a river of water flowing through a river of earth,” our lives being a chance to learn “something of love,” this being “the order of things, nothing to complain about.”

As gorgeous and evocative as these stories are, I was sometimes too aware of the idealism of the past. Elders have always talked about the ‘good old days’ when things were better. Andy’s good old days still included coal furnaces and food fueled cooking fires. There was danger and prejudice and ostracism.

I greatly enjoyed these beautifully written stories.

I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Hannah Coulter reminisces about her life living on a farm in rural Kentucky during the middle of the 20th century. (fiction)

I had never heard of Wendell Berry or his Port Williams series so I had no expectations about this book. He writes in a way that seems like he is summarizing a thought or action. I kept waiting for him to change the tone of it. I am not explaining this well but it was odd for me.

This quote I can totally relate to. It is timeless. Quote from Hannah - "To be the mother of a grown-up child means that you don’t have a child anymore, and that is sad. When the grown-up child leaves home, that is sadder. I wanted Margaret to go to college, but when she actually went away it broke my heart."

Better books might exist in the world, but I sure haven’t found them.

Wendell Berry’s Port William rivals Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, but only Berry’s characters will teach you how to live and die with an honor that no other fictional author has broached.