Leavings: Poems - Softcover

Berry, Wendell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158243624X ISBN 13: 9781582436241

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2011

Synopsis

“Berry has become ever more prophetic . . . In the Sabbaths of 2005–08 published here, Berry angrily mourns the degradation of the nation wrought by destruction of the land and the pursuit of wealth and power. He says that we must prepare to live without hope for a while, though in the very first of the Sabbaths, he prays not to lose love along with hope: ‘Help me, please, to carry / this candle against the wind.’ Despite anger and bitterness, he often recalls and teaches the beauty and propriety of creation, too. If he is a Jeremiah, he is also a David the psalmist.” ―Booklist

No one writes like Wendell Berry. Whether essay, novel, story, or poem, his inimitable voice rings true, as natural as the land he has farmed in Kentucky for over 40 years.

Following the widely praised Given, this new collection offers a masterful blend of epigrams, elegies, lyrics, and letters, with the occasional short love poem. Alternately amused, outraged, and resigned, Berry's welcome voice is the constant in this varied mix. The book concludes with a new sequence of Sabbath poems, works that have spawned from Berry's Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation.

Berry's themes are reflections of his life: friends, family, the farm, the nature around us as well as within. He speaks strongly for himself and sometimes for the lost heart of the country. As he has borne witness to the world for eight decades, what he offers us now in this collection of poems is of incomparable value.

About this title

About the Author:

Berrys themes are reflections of his life: friends, family, the farm, the nature around us as well as within. He speaks strongly for himself and sometimes for the lost heart of the country. As he has borne witness to the world for eight decades, what he offers us now in this new collection of poems is of incomparable value.

From Booklist:

Berry has become ever more prophetic. The poems he collectively calls sabbaths, composed on Sundays in the woods on his farmland since 1979, occupy four-fifths of this book. If originally meditational and quiet, however serious and deep the passions they mulled over, the sabbath poems are now oracular in the mode of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other Hebrew prophets who enjoined their people to come to their senses and remember the Lord and his bounty, promises, and judgment. In the sabbaths of 2005–08 published here, Berry angrily mourns the degradation of the nation wrought by destruction of the land and the pursuit of wealth and power. He says that we must prepare to live without hope for a while, though in the very first of the sabbaths, he prays not to lose love along with hope: “Help me, please, to carry / this candle against the wind.” Despite anger and bitterness, he often recalls and teaches the beauty and propriety of creation, too. If he is a Jeremiah, he is also a David the psalmist. --Ray Olson

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 158243624X
• ISBN 13: 9781582436241
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144