Customer Reviews

Farming: A Hand Book

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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.