Farming: A Hand Book [Paperback]

Wendell Berry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1971

The America many people would like to believe in is convincingly explored in this volume of poems by a writer close to the heart of things. The sanity and eloquence of these poems spring from the land in Kentucky where Wendell Berry was born, married, lives, farms, and writes. From classic pastoral themes both lyrical and reflective, to a verse play, to a dramatic narrative and the manic, entertaining, prescient ravings of Berry’s Mad Farmer, these poems show a unity of language and consciousness, skill and sensitivity, that has placed Wendell Berry at the front rank of contemporary American poets.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Love the world. Work for nothing. / Take all that you have and be poor. / Love someone who does not deserve it," writes Wendell Berry in the persona of "the mad farmer," a conservative landsman who deeply opposes the then-current war in Vietnam and the ongoing crisis of farming and the environment. Lyric, satiric, didactic, by turns funny and earnest, the poems collected in Farming, most from the late 1960s, established Berry as a social critic and artist of the first order.

Product Details

• Paperback: 118 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt (March 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156301717
• ISBN-13: 978-0156301718
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forty years and a day., October 9, 2011

By 

Charles J. Marr (Cambridge Springs, Pa USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Farming: A Hand Book (Paperback)

Barry tells us in a headnote that heis publisher wanted to reprint this work after a forty year period, and reprint he does. He says he has done some revision on the verse play"Bringer of Water" but nothing else.Knowing how poets want to have a second chance to "say it right", I might want to check; these poems are as fresh and lively as the morning's milk. Not having an original at hand, I can not compare ; yet I take Berry at his word. By now Wendell Barry's subtle skill is known to most sensitive readers.It's here as he looks at the magic of the farmer as resurrection man, as mad slave to chance and weather and as the temporary warder of land; the man who is owned more by the land than the owner thereof. There is a sense how we pass through leaving subtle traces which may or may not be observed by others but none the less are there upon the landscape.

Barry looks at both the practical labor of farming as in "The Barn" when he captures the sweaty frenzy of onloading hay as a thunderstorm approaches and the "rain dashed and drove against the roof." His Mad Farmer being contrary -a gift of the farmer and perhaps the reason for farmers' optimism, when told "God is dead!" disagrees since he has seen him fishing in the Kentucky River everyday In "A Failure" he observes the absence of the wild lillies one spring and seeks an explaination in a fashion with overtones of "The Wild Swans at Coole." There is a great deal more hereThe lyrical is clearly lyrical, but Berry at times also points to a tree in the woods and says "See?" And if as readers we are open, we do.