The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982 (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"For all his earthiness, Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau... Ranging from the 'known' to the 'celestial,' from rich concreteness to prophetical intonations, Mr. Berry's Collected Poems establishes him as a major poet of our time." -- The Baltimore Sun

"Wendell Berry is one of those rare individuals who speak to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life, be they those of composing a poem, preparing a hill for planting, raising a family, working for the good of oneself and one's neighbors, loving." -- The Bloomsbury Review

"Wendell Berry's poetry is a validation of his decision nearly twenty years ago to give up the literary life in New York and seek a deeper bond with his ancestral home, a hillside farm in Henry County, Kentucky, on the Kentucky River. His straightforward search for a life connected to the soil, for marriage as a sacrament and family life, affirms a style that is resonant with the authentic... He can be said to have returned American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Wendell Berry's poetry is a validation of his decision nearly twenty years ago to give up the literary life in New York and seek a deeper bond with his ancestral home, a hillside farm in Henry County, Kentucky, on the Kentucky River. His straightforward search for a life connected to the soil, for marriage as a sacrament and family life, affirms a style that is resonant with the authentic . . . He can be said to have returned American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose."--The New York Times Book Review

"Berry is one of those rare individuals who speak to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life, be they those of composing a poem, preparing a hill for planting, raising a family, working for the good of oneself and one's neighbors, or loving."--The Bloomsbury Review

"For all his earthiness, Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau . . . Ranging from the 'known' to the 'celestial,' from rich concreteness to prophetical intonations, Mr. Berry's Collected Poems establishes him as a major poet of our time."--The Baltimore Sun

"[Berry's poems] shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life."--The Christian Science Monitor
-- Review

"[Berry's poems] shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life." -- The Christian Science Monitor

The Adze
Against The War In Vietnam
Air And Fire
Anger Against Beasts
An Anniversary
Another Descent
April Woods: Morning
An Architecture
The Aristocracy
The Arrival
At A Country Funeral
An Autumn Burning
Awake At Night
Before Dark
Below
The Bird Killer
The Birth (near Port William)
Boone
Breaking
The Broken Ground
Canticle
The Clear Days
The Clearing: 1
The Clearing: 10
The Clearing: 11
The Clearing: 2
The Clearing: 3
The Clearing: 4
The Clearing: 5
The Clearing: 6
The Clearing: 7
The Clearing: 8
The Clearing: 9
The Cold
The Cold Pane
The Companions
The Contrariness Of The Mad Farmer
The Country Of Marriage
Creation Myth
The Current
A Dance
The Dance
Dark With Power
The Design Of A House
Desolation
A Discipline
Do Not Be Ashamed
The Dream
Earth And Fire
Elegy
Elegy; Pryor Thomas Berry, March 4, 1864 - February 23, 1946
Enriching The Earth
Envoy
Except
Fall
Falling Asleep
The Familiar
The Farmer Among The Tombs
The Farmer And The Sea
The Farmer, Speaking Of Monuments
The Fear Of Darkness
The Fear Of Love
February 2, 1968
The Finches
The First
For The Future
For The Hog Killing
For The Rebuilding Of A House
Forty Years
From The Crest: 1
From The Crest: 10
From The Crest: 2
From The Crest: 3
From The Crest: 4
From The Crest: 5
From The Crest: 6
From The Crest: 7
From The Crest: 8
From The Crest: 9
From The Distance
The Gathering
The Gift Of Gravity
Goods
Grace
The Grandmother
Green And White
Grief
The Guest
The Handing Down: 1. The Light
The Handing Down: 10. The Freedom Of Loving
The Handing Down: 11. He Takes His Time
The Handing Down: 12. The Fern
The Handing Down: 13. He Is In The Habit Of The World
The Handing Down: 14. The Young Man, Thinking Of The Old
The Handing Down: 2. The Conversation
The Handing Down: 3. The Old Man Is Older In History ...
The Handing Down: 4. He Looks Out The Window At The Town
The Handing Down: 5. He Has Lived Through Another Night
The Handing Down: 6. The New House
The Handing Down: 8. A Wilderness Starts Toward Him
The Handing Down: 9. Though He Can't Know Death,...
Her First Calf
The Heron
The Hidden Singer
History
A Homecoming
Horses
In Memory: Stuart Egnal
In Rain
In This World
Independence Day
July, 1773
Kentucky River Junction
The Law That Marries All Things
Letter: 1.
Letter: 2.
Letter: 3.
The Lilies
The Lilies
The Long Hunter
The Mad Farmer In The City
The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment
The Mad Farmer Revolution
The Mad Farmer's Love Song
The Man Born To Farming
A Man Walking And Singing: 1
A Man Walking And Singing: 2
A Man Walking And Singing: 3
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
March 22, 1968
March Snow
Marriage
A Marriage, An Elegy
May Song
The Meadow
Meditation In The Spring Rain
A Meeting
The Morning's News
A Music
My Great-grandfather's Slaves
The Necessity Of Faith
The New Roof
Observance
October 10
The Old Elm Tree By The River
On The Hill Late At Night
Our Children, Coming Of Age
Passing The Strait: 1.
Passing The Strait: 2.
Passing The Strait: 3.
The Peace Of Wild Things
The Plan
Planting Crocuses: 1
Planting Crocuses: 2
Planting Crocuses: 3
Planting Trees
Poem
Poem For J.
A Poem Of Thanks
The Porch Over The River
A Praise
Praise: 1
Praise: 2
Prayer After Eating
Prayers And Sayings Of The Mad Farmer
A Purification
Rain
The Recognition
Requiem; Owen Flood, January 13, 1920 - March 27, 1974
Returning
Ripening
Rising: 1.
Rising: 2.
Rising: 3.
Rising: 4.
Rising: 5.
Rising: 6.
The River Bridged And Forgot
The Satisfactions Of The Mad Farmer
The Seeds
September 2, 1969
Setting Out
Seventeen Years
The Silence
The Silence
Sleep
The Slip
The Snake
Song
Song (1)
Song (2)
Song (3)
Song (4)
Song In A Year Of Catastrophe
A Song Sparrow Singing In The Fall
The Sorrel Filly
Sowing
Sparrow
The Springs
A Standing Ground
The Star
Stay Home
The Stones
The Strait: 1.
The Strait: 2.
The Strait: 3.
The Strait: 4.
The Supplanting
The Sycamore
Testament
The Thief
The Thought Of Something Else
Three Elegiac Poems; Harry Erdman Perry, 1861-1965: 2
Three Elegiac Poems; Harry Erdman Perry, 1881-1945: 3
Three Elegiac Poems; Harry Erdman Perry, 1881-1965: 1
Throwing Away The Mail
To A Siberian Woodsman (after Looking At Some Pictures In A Magazine)
To Gary Snyder
To Go By Singing
To Know The Dark
To My Children, Fearing For Them
To Tanya At Christmas
To The Holy Spirit
To The Unseeable Animal
To Think Of The Life Of A Man
To What Listens
Traveling At Home
Walking On The River Ice
The Want Of Peace
A Warning To My Readers
The Way Of Pain
We Who Prayed And Wept
A Wet Time
The Wheel
Where
The Wild
The Wild Geese
Window Poems: 1
Window Poems: 10
Window Poems: 11
Window Poems: 12
Window Poems: 13
Window Poems: 14
Window Poems: 15
Window Poems: 16
Window Poems: 17
Window Poems: 18
Window Poems: 19
Window Poems: 2
Window Poems: 20
Window Poems: 21
Window Poems: 22
Window Poems: 23
Window Poems: 24
Window Poems: 25
Window Poems: 26
Window Poems: 27
Window Poems: 3
Window Poems: 4
Window Poems: 5
Window Poems: 6
Window Poems: 7
Window Poems: 8
Window Poems: 9
Winter Night Poem For Mary
Winter Nightfall
The Winter Rain
The Wish To Be Generous
Woods
Work Song
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Review

"Wendell Berry's poetry is a validation of his decision nearly twenty years ago to give up the literary life in New York and seek a deeper bond with his ancestral home, a hillside farm in Henry County, Kentucky, on the Kentucky River. His straightforward search for a life connected to the soil, for marriage as a sacrament and family life, affirms a style that is resonant with the authentic . . . He can be said to have returned American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose."--The New York Times Book Review

"Berry is one of those rare individuals who speak to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life, be they those of composing a poem, preparing a hill for planting, raising a family, working for the good of oneself and one's neighbors, or loving."--The Bloomsbury Review

"For all his earthiness, Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau . . . Ranging from the 'known' to the 'celestial,' from rich concreteness to prophetical intonations, Mr. Berry's Collected Poems establishes him as a major poet of our time."--The Baltimore Sun

"[Berry's poems] shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life."--The Christian Science Monitor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press; Later Printing edition (April 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865471975
• ISBN-13: 978-0865471979
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #177,308 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Holy Book, June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This is truly a holy book. In his poems Berry's prose, philosophy, humanity, and concerns coalesce into poems that reinforce every notion you may hold that life and love are truly simple matters. We Americans could do well to slow down from our coffee-jagged cutthroat lifestyles (workdays and weekends included) enough to really listen carefully to this voice.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love, Land and Liberation, May 17, 2005

By	Patricia Kramer (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wendell Berry's influence seeps through and sustains our land. I had read his stories of Port William. I was led to this book of poetry by a poem's mention in the Afterword in William Greider's "The Soul of Capitalism". In the latest issue of "The Land Report", Wes Jackson quotes from a letter from Wendell Berry that 22 years later led to a conference titled "Toward an Ignorance-Based Worldview".

Some of the poems in this book describe the wonder of and need to fight for true everyday love. They are some of the most moving love poems I have ever read. Many talk about the land and the continuity of its people and history that comprise a place and community. No one speaks better on this topic.

Then there are the Mad Farmer Liberation Front poems. Read this one and head out in a new direction.

Manifesto:The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid,
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion-put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself; Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Wil this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
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.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book that stays on my nightstand, August 4, 1999

By A Customer

Like a river I love to swim in