Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell E. Berryis an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 August 1934
CityHenry County, KY
CountryUnited States of America
The most available example of how poetry works for a poet is yourself, and yet you'll probably be the last one to know exactly how you're serving the art and how the art is serving you.
From the union of power and money, from the union of power and secrecy, from the union of government and science, from the union of government and art, from the union of science and money, from the union of ambition and ignorance, from the union of genius and war, from the union of outer space and inner vacuity, the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.
An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.
We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.
The name of our proper connection to the earth is 'good work,' for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing.
The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
We clasp the hands of those that go before us, And the hands of those who come after us. We enter the little circle of each other's arms And the larger circle of lovers, Whose hands are joined in a dance, And the larger circle of all creatures, Passing in and out of life, Who move also in a dance, To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it Except in fragments
I'm a writer more than I am a talker.
I've had a good life, and was born to and among people I've admired and loved.
If we can't afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we're in an insurmountable mess.
We're all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I'm complicit in the things that I'm trying to oppose.
When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest.
The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle - those things are good gifts. The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts. We have to regard them as gifts because we couldn't make them. We have to regard them as good gifts because we couldn't live without them.