my sacred place
A Collection of Wendell Berry Poems, Essays and Stories
My Sacred Place: A Collection of Wendell Berry Poems, Essays and Stories
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There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts. —Wendell Berry
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The spring work had started, and I needed a long night's rest, or that was my opinion, and I was about to go to bed, but then the telephone rang. It was Elton. He had been getting ready for bed, too, I think, and it had occurred to him then that he was worried. "Andy, when did you see the Rowanberrys?" I knew what he had on his mind. The river was in flood. The backwater was over the bottoms, and Art and Mart would not be able to get out except by boat or on foot. "Not since the river came up." "Well, neither have I. And their phone's out. Mary, when did Mart call up here?" I heard Mary telling him, "Monday night," and then, "It was Monday night," Elton said to me. "I've tried to call every day since, and I can't get anybody. That's four days." "Well, surely they're all right." "Well, that's what Mary and I have been saying. Surely they are. They've been taking care of themselves a long time. But, then, you never know." "The thing is, we don't know." We knew what we were doing, and both of us were a little embarrassed about it. The Rowanberry Place had carried that name since the first deeds were recorded in the log cabin that was the first courthouse at Hargrave. Rowanberrys had been taking care of themselves there for the better part of two hundred years. We knew that Arthur and Martin Rowanberry required as little worrying about as anybody alive. But now, in 1
venturing to worry about them, we had put them, so to speak, under the sign of mortality. They were, after all, the last of the Rowanberrys, and they were getting old. We were uneasy in being divided from them by the risen water and out of touch. It caused us to think of things that could happen. Elton said, "It's not hard, you know, to think of things that could happen." "Well," I said, "do you think we'd better go see about them?" He laughed. "Well, we've thought, haven't we? I guess we'd better go." "All right. I'll meet you at the mailbox." I hung up and went to get my cap and jacket. "Nobody's heard from Art and Mart for four days," I said to Flora. "Their phone's out." "And you and Elton are going to see about them," Flora said. She had been
She did not imagine the worst. She just dealt with mortality as it happened.
eavesdropping. "I guess we are." Flora was inclined to be amused at the way Elton and I imagined the worst. She did not imagine the worst. She just dealt with mortality as it happened. I picked up a flashlight as I went out the door, but it was not much needed. The moon was big, bright enough to put out most of the stars. I walked out to the mailbox and made myself comfortable, leaning against it. Elton and I had obliged ourselves to worry about the Rowanberrys, but I was glad all the same for the excuse to be out. The night was still, the country all silvery with moonlight, inlaid with bottomless shadows, and the air shimmered with the trilling of peepers from every stream and pond margin for miles, one fullthroated sound filling the ears so that it seemed impossible that you
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I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved. —Wendell Berry
could hear anything else. And yet I heard Elton's pickup while it was still a long way off, and then light glowed in the air, and then I could see his headlights. He turned into the lane and stopped and pushed the door open for me. I made room for myself among a bundle of empty feed sacks, two buckets, and a chain saw. "Fine night," he said. He had lit a cigarette, and the cab was fragrant with smoke. "It couldn't be better, could it?" "Well, the moon could be just a little brighter, and it could be a teensy bit warmer." I could hear that he was grinning. He was in one of his companionable moods, making fun of himself. I laughed, and we rode without talking up out of the Katy's Branch valley and turned onto the state road. "It's awful the things that can get into your mind," Elton said. "I'd hate it if anything was to happen to them." The Rowanberrys were Elton's friends, and because they were his, they were mine. Elton had known them ever since he was just a little half-orphan boy, living with his mother and older brothers on the next farm up the creek. He had got a lot of his raising by being underfoot and in the way at the Rowanberrys'. And in the time of his manhood, the Rowanberry Place had been one of his resting places. To rest, he needed to be in somebody else's place. We spent a lot of Sunday afternoons down at the Rowanberrys', on the porch looking out into the little valley in the summertime, inside by the stove if it was 3
Art was the reme what he knew an winter. Art and Mart batched there together after their mother died, and in spite of the electric lights and telephone and a few machines, they lived a life that would have been recognizable to Elias Rowanberry, who had marked his X in the county's first deed book-a life that involved hunting and fishing and foraging as conventionally as it involved farming. They practiced an old-fashioned independence, an old-fashioned generosity, and an old-fashioned fidelity to their word and their friends. And they were hound men of the old correct school. They would not let a dog tree anywhere in earshot, day or night, workday or Sunday, without going to him. "It can be a nuisance," Art said, "but it don't hardly seem right to disappoint 'em." Mart was the one Elton liked best to work with. Mart was not only a fine hand but had a gift for accommodating himself to the rhythms and ways of his partner. "He can think your thoughts," Elton said. Between the two of them was a sympathy of body and mind that they had worked out and that they trusted with an unshaken, unspoken trust. And so Elton was always at ease and quiet in Mart's company when they were at rest. Art was the rememberer. He knew what he knew and what had been known by a lot of dead kinfolks and neighbors. They lived on in his mind and spoke there, reminding him and us of things that needed to be remembered. Art had a compound mind, as a daisy has a compound flower, and his mind had something of the unwary comeliness of a daisy. Something that happened would remind him of something that he remembered, which would remind him of something that his grandfather remembered. It was not that he "lived in his mind." He lived in the place, 4
emberer. He knew nd what had been but the place was where the memories were, and he walked among them, tracing them out over the living ground. That was why we loved him. We followed the state road along the ridges toward Port William and then at the edge of town turned down the Sand Ripple Road. We went down the hill through the woods, and as we came near the floor of the valley, Elton went more carefully and we began to watch. We crossed a little board culvert that rattled under the wheels, eased around a bend, and there was the backwater, the headlights glancing off it into the treetops, the road disappearing into it. Elton stopped the truck. He turned off his headlights and the engine, and the quietness of the moonlight and the woods came down around
He lived in the place, but
us. I could hear the peepers again. It was wonderful what the road going
the place was where the
under the water did to that place. It was not only that we could not go
memories were, and he walked
where we were used to going; it was as if a thought that we were used to thinking could not be thought.
among them, tracing them out over the living ground.
"Listen!" Elton said. He had heard a barred owl off in the woods. He quietly rolled the window down. And then, right overhead, an owl answered: "HOOOOOAWWW!" And the far one said, "Hoo hoohooaw!" "Listen!" Elton said again. He was whispering.
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but the place was wher The owls went through their whole repertory of hoots and clucks and cackles and gobbles. "Listen to them!" Elton said. "They've got a lot on their minds." Being in the woods at night excited him. He was a hunter. And we were excited by the flood's interruption of the road. The rising of the wild water had moved us back in time. Elton quietly opened his door and got out and then, instead of slamming the door, just pushed it to. I did the same and came around and followed him as he walked slowly down the road, looking for a place to climb out of the cut. Once we had climbed the bank and stepped over the fence and were walking among the big trees, we seemed already miles from the truck. The water gleamed over the bottomlands below us on our right; you could not see that there had ever been a road in that place. I followed Elton along the slope through the trees. Neither of us thought to use a flashlight, though we each had one, nor did we talk. The moon gave plenty of light. We could see everything-underfoot the blooms of twinleaf, bloodroot, rue anemone, the little stars of spring beauties, and overhead the littlest branches, even the blooms on the sugar maples. The ground was soft from the rain, and we hardly made a sound. The flowers around us seemed to float in the shadows so that we walked like waders among stars, uncertain how far down to put our feet. And over the broad shine of the backwater, the calling of the peepers rose like another flood, higher than the water flood, and thrilled and trembled in the air. 6
re the memories were It was a long walk because we had to go around the inlets of the backwater that lay in every swag and hollow. Way off, now and again, we could hear the owls. Once we startled a deer and stood still while it plunged away into the shadows. And always we were walking among flowers. I wanted to keep thinking that they were like stars, but after a while I could not think so. They were not like stars. They did not have that hard, distant glitter. And yet in their pale, peaceful way, they shone. They collected their little share of light and gave it back. Now and then, when we came to an especially thick patch of them, Elton would point. Or he would raise his hand and we would stop a minute and listen to the owls. I was wider awake than I had been since morning would have been glad
But what if we got no answer? What if the answer was trouble?
to go on walking all night long. Around us we could feel the year coming, as strong and wide and irresistible as a wind. But we were thinking, too, of the Rowanberrys. That we were in a mood to loiter and did not loiter would have reminded us of them, if we had needed reminding. To go to their house, with the water up, would have required a long walk from any place we could have started. We were taking the shortest way, which left us with the problem that it was going to be a little too short. The best we could do, this way, would be to come down the valley until we would be across from the house but still divided from it by a quarter mile or more of backwater. We could call to them from there. But what if we got no answer? What if the answer was trouble? Well, they had a boat over there. If they needed us, one of them could set us over in the boat. But what if we got no answer? 7
YEEEEAAAH What if, to put the best construction upon silence, they could not hear us? Well, we could only go as near as we could get and call.
So if our walk had the feeling of a ramble, it was not one. We were going as straight to the Rowanberrys' house as the water and the lay of the land would allow. After a while we began to expect to see a light. And then we began to wonder if there was a light to see. Elton stopped. "I thought we'd have seen their light by now." I said, "They're probably asleep." Those were the first words we had spoken since we left the truck. After so long, in so much quiet, our voices sounded small. Elton went on among the trees and the shadows, and I followed him. We climbed over a little shoulder of the slope then and saw one window shining. It was the light of an oil lamp, so their electricity was out, too. "And now we're found," Elton said. He sang it, just that much of the old hymn, almost in a whisper. We went through a little more of the woods and climbed the fence into the Rowanberrys' hill pasture. We could see their big barn standing up black now against the moonlight on the other side of the road, which was on high ground at that place, clear of the backwater. When we were on the gravel we could hear our steps. We walked side by side, Elton in one wheel track, I in the other, until the road went under the water again. We were as close to the house then as we could get without a boat. We 8
H!
stopped and considered the distance.
And then Elton cupped his hands around his mouth, and called, "Ohhhhh, Mart! Ohhhhh, Art!" We waited, it seemed, while Art had time to say, "Did you hear somebody?" and Mart to answer, "Well, I thought so." We saw light come to another window, as somebody picked up a lamp and opened the hall door. We heard the front door open. And then Art's voice came across the water: "Yeeeaaah?"
And now that both of them are dead, I love to think
And Elton called back, "Are you aaalll riiight?"
of them standing with
I knew they were. They were all right, and we were free to go back
the shining backwater
through the woods and home to sleep.
between them, while
But now I know that it was neither of the Rowanberrys who was under
Elton's voice goes out
the sign of mortality that night. It was Elton. Before another April came
across the distance, is
he would be in his grave on the hill at Port William. Old Art Rowanberry,
heard and answered, and
who had held him on his lap, would survive him by a dozen years. And now that both of them are dead, I love to think of them standing
the other voice travels back: "Yeeeaaah!"
with the shining backwater between them, while Elton's voice goes out across the distance, is heard and answered, and the other voice travels back: "Yeeeaaah!"
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In the April rain I climbed up to drink of the live water leaping off the hill, white over the rocks. Where the mossy root of a sycamore cups the flow, I drank and saw the branches feathered with green. The thickets, I said, send up their praise at dawn. Was that what I meant—I meant my words to have the heft and grace, the flight and weight of the very hill, its life rising-or was it some old exultation that abides with me? We'll not soon escape the faith of our fathers-no more than crazy old Mrs. Gaines, whom my grandmother remembers standing balanced eighty years ago atop a fence in Port Royal, Kentucky, singing: "One Lord, one Faith, and one Cornbread." They had a cage built for her in a room, "nearly as big as the room, not cramped up," and when she grew wild they kept her there. But mostly she went free in the town, and they allowed the children to go for walks with her. She strayed once beyond where they thought she went, was lost
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Out of the town’s lost minds long buried, sh back by a memory near
to them, "and they had an awful time
May it abide a poet with as much grace!
finding her." For her, to be free
For I too am perhaps a little mad,
was only to be lost. What is it about her
standing here wet in the drizzzle, listening
that draws me on, so that my mind becomes a child
to the clashing syllables of the water. Surely
to follow after her? An old woman
there is a great Word being put together here.
when my grandmother was a girl, she must have seen
I begin to hear it gather in the opening
the virgin forest standing here, the amplitude
of the flowers and the leafing-out of the trees,
of our beginning, of which no speech
in the growth of bird nests in the crotches
remains. Out of the town's lost history,
of the branches, in the settling of the dead
buried in minds long buried, she has come,
leaves into the ground, in the whittling
brought back by a memory near death. I see her
of beetle and grub, in my thoughts
in her dusky clothes, hair uncombed, the children
moving in the hill’s flesh. Coming here,
following. I see her wandering, muttering
I crossed a place where a stream flows
to herself as her way was, among these hills
underground, and the sounds of the hidden water
half a century before my birth, in the silence
and the water come to light braided in my ear.
of such speech as I know. Dawn and twilight
I think the maker is here, creating his hill
and dawn again trembling in the leaves
as it will be, out of what it was.
over her, she tramped the raveling verges
The thickets, I say, send up their praise
of her time. It was a shadowy country
at dawn! One Lord one Faith, and one Cornbread
that she knew, holding a darkness that was past
forever! But hush. Wait. Be as still
and a darkness to come. The fleeting lights
as the dead and the unborn in whose silence
tattered her churchly speech to mad song.
that old one walked, muttering and singing,
When her poor wandering head broke the confines
followed by the children.
of all any of them knew, they put her in a cage. But I am glad to know it was a commodious cage,
For a time there
not cramped up. And I am glad to know
I turned away from the world’s I knew, and was lost.
that other times the town left her free
For a time there I was lost and free, speechless
to be as she was in it, and to go her way.
in the multitudinous assembling of his Word.
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t history, buried in he has come,brought r death Out of the town's lost history,
buried in minds long buried, she has come, brought back by a memory near death.
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Where the road came, no longer bearing men, but briars, honeysuckle, buckbush and wild grape, the house fell to ruin, and only the old wife's daffodils rose in spring among the wild vines to be domestic and to keep the faith, and her peonies drenched the tangle with white bloom. For a while in the years of its wilderness a wayfaring drunk slept clinched to the floor there in the cold nights. And then I came, and set fire to the remnants of house and shed, and let time hurry in the flame. I fired it so that all would burn, and watched the blaze settle on the waste like a shawl. I knew those old ones departed then, and I arrived. As the fire fed, I felt rise in me something that would not bear my name-something that bears us through the flame, and is lightened of us, and is glad.
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history’s death up the trees that wo I claim, and 16
pon the place and ould have come act, and am In the stilled place that once was a road going down
from the town to the river, and where the lives of marriages grew
a house, cistern and barn, flowers, the tilted stone of borders, and the deeds of their lives ran to neglect, and honeysuckle and then the fire overgrew it all, I walk heavy
with seed, spreading on the cleared hill the beginnings
of green, clover and grass to be pasture. Between
history's death upon the place and the trees that would have come
I claim, and act, and am mingled in the fate of the world.
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In the great circle, dancing in and out of time, you move now toward your partners, answering the music suddenly audible to you that only carried you before and will carry you again. When you meet the destined ones now dancing toward you, we will be in line behind you, out of your awareness for the time, we whom you know, others we remember whom you do not remember, others forgotten by us all. When you meet, and hold love in your arms, regardless of all, the unknown will dance away from you toward the horizon of light. Our names will flutter on these hills like little fires.
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If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins. —Wendell Berry
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His memories li His memories lived in the place like fingers locked in the rock ledges like roots. When he died and his influence entered the air I said, Let my mind be the earth of his thought, let his kindness go ahead of me. Though I do not escape the history barbed in my flesh, certain wise movements of his hands, the turns of his speech keep with me. His hope of peace keeps with me in harsh days, the shell of his breath dimming away three summers in the earth.
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ived in the place
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In 1983, reviewing a book of agricultural essays by Wes Jackson and one by me, Lewis Hyde suggested that our two books were part of an effort of the periphery to be heard by the center. This has stayed in my mind as perhaps the most useful thing that has been said about my agricultural writing and that of my allies. It is useful because the dichotomy between center and periphery does in fact exist, as does the tendency of the center to be ignorant of the periphery. We can say, for example, that a land grant university is a center with a designated periphery which it is supposed to maintain and improve. Or an industrial city is a center with a periphery which it is bound to influence and which, according to its politics and its power, it may either conserve or damage. Or a national or a state government is a center solemnly entrusted with responsibility for peripheral places, but in general it extends its protections and favors to the commercial centers, which outvote or out-"contribute" the periphery. But above all, now, as a sort of center of centers, is the global "free market" economy of the great corporations, the periphery of which is everywhere, and for its periphery this center expresses no concern and acknowledges no responsibility.
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I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved. —Wendell Berry
The global economy is a development-it is intended
It is still true that the center is supported by the
apparently as the culmination-of the technological
periphery. All human economy is still land-based.
and commercial colonialist orthodoxy that has domi-
To the extent that we must eat and drink and be
nated the world increasingly since the Renaissance,
clothed, sheltered, and warmed, we live from the land.
the principle of the orthodoxy being that any
The idea that we have now progressed from a land-
commercial entity is entitled to wealth according
based economy to an economy based on information
to its power. A center, then, as I will use the term, is
is a fantasy.
wherever the wealth, power, and knowledge of this overbearing economy have accumulated. Modern
It is still true also that the people of the center
technology, as it has developed from oceanic navi-
believe that the people of the periphery will always
gation to the World Wide Web, has been increasingly
supply their needs from the land and will always
a centralizing force, enabling ever-larger accumu-
keep the land productive: There will always be an
lations of wealth, power, and knowledge in an ever
abundance of food, fiber, timber, and fuel. This too
smaller number of centers.
is a fantasy. It is not known, but is simply taken for granted. As its power of attraction increases, the
Since my concern here is with the need for commu-
center becomes more ignorant of the periphery. And
nication-or, as I would prefer to say, conversa-
under the pervasive influence of the center, the
tion-between periphery and center, I must begin
economic landscapes of the periphery have fewer
with the center's characteristic ignorance of the
and fewer inhabitants who know them well and know
periphery. This, I suppose, must always have been
how to care properly for them. Many rural areas are
so, even of the market towns of the world before the
now populated mostly by urban people.
Renaissance. But in that older world, the cities and towns mostly (though with significant exceptions)
In the New York Review of Books of March 24, 2005,
could take for granted that their tributary land-
Clifford Geertz wrote that tsunamis and other
scapes were populated by established rural commu-
large-scale disasters threaten "the conviction that
nities that knew both how to make the land produce
perhaps most reconciles many of us...to our own
and how to take care of it.
mortality: that, though we ourselves may perish, the community into which we were born, and the sort of 23
life it supports, will somehow live on." But except for
Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane
a few of the better-established Amish communities,
knives, hoes, plows-name it. Sunup to sundown, hard,
this conviction is an illusion; one cannot imagine how
miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We
Mr. Geertz has held onto it. No matter even if "we"
stuck together, shared what little we had, and loved
have stayed put geographically, if we are over thirty,
and respected each other.
or maybe even twenty, the community in which we
But just look at things today. Where the people?
live is by now radically unlike "the community in
Where the roses? Where the four-o'clocks? The palm-
which we were born."
of-Christians? Where the people used to sing and pray in the church? I'll tell you.’
In fact, there are now many people whose native communities have not only been radically changed
Under them trees back there, that's where. And
but have been completely destroyed by some form
where they used to stay, the weeds got it now, just
of "development." Since the end of World War II, the
waiting for the tractor to come plow it up.
economic, technological, and social forces of indus-
You had to be here then to be able to don't see it
trialism have pretty thoroughly disintegrated the
now. But I was here then, and I don't see it now...I
rural communities of the United States and, I believe,
was scared one day that tractor was go'n come in
of other parts of the world also, inducing in them a
there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all
"mobility" that has boiled over in the cities, disinte-
proof that we ever was. Like now they trying to get
grating them as well.
rid of all proof that black people ever farmed this
The loss of the old life of the rural communities has
from the starten but motor machines...Mama and
been written off as an improvement, and only some-
Papa worked too hard in these fields. They mama and
times lamented. Nowhere that I know has it been
they papa worked too hard in these same fields. They
more knowingly and poignantly lamented than in
mama and they papa people worked too hard, too
land with plows and mules-like if they had nothing
Ernest J. Gaines's novel, A Gathering of Old Men, set
hard to have that tractor just come in that graveyard
on a sugarcane plantation in Louisiana. Here the man
and destroy all proof that they ever was. I'm the last
named Johnny Paul is speaking for the community of
one left.
black field hands that he knew as a growing boy. 24
This too is part of an effort of the periphery to be heard by the center. Johnny Paul's speech, of which I have quoted only a part, is obviously eloquent and as
In fact, there are now many people whose native
deeply moving as he is deeply moved, but still we are
communities have not only
left with the question: Was what he was lamenting
been radically changed
actually lamentable? To begin to answer that question, we have to answer another: Was what those people knew about their place of any value to their place and to people in other places? Or, to state the question a little more thematically, is there a practical reason for
but have been completely destroyed by some form of "development."
the periphery to be heard by the center?
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Wendell Berry lives and farms with his family in
to neglect or to ignore it. He says that a traditional
Henry County, Kentucky, and is the author of more
farmer "will walk his fields out of interest; the indus-
than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
trial farmer or manager only out of necessity." Berry
Among his novels (set in the fictional community of
is the fifth generation of his father's family and the
Port William Kentucky) are Nathan Coulter (1960), A
sixth generation of his mother's to farm in Henry
Place on Earth (1967), and The Memory of Old Jack
County, Kentucky. Loyal to the cyclic vision, he knows
(1974); short story collections include The Wild Birds
the history of his ancestors on the land, and he
(1986), Remembering (1988), Fidelity (1993), and
understands how each has affected the other.
Watch With Me (1994); collections of essays include, among many others, A Continuous Harmony (1972),
Berry's premise, implicit, often explicit, in almost all
The Unsettling of America (1977), Recollected Essays
of his work, is that we must have a particular place,
(1981), and Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community
must identify with it, must learn from it, must love it,
(1993); and among his many volumes of poetry are
must care for it. And only by living in this place long
A Part (1980), The Wheel (1982), Collected Poems
enough, and by attending to the knowledge of those
(1985) and Entries (1984).
who have lived there before us, will we fully realize the consequences of our presence there: "We may
Berry believes that a "place" has its own ruling
deeply affect a place we own for good or ill," Berry
Nature. Thus, Berry stresses that a traditional farmer
has written, "but our lives are nevertheless included
will always consider and adapt his practices to the
in its life; it will survive us, bearing the results."
needs of the land's primal character. Successful and sustainable agriculture, then, as Berry understands it, is possible only by maintaining a cyclic vision, one attuned with Nature, rather than a linear vision, one seeking conquest of Nature. The more a person is removed from the substance of his work, Berry argues, the greater is his tendency
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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. —Wendell Berry
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List of Works Fiction
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999
Fidelity: Five Stories, 1992
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997,
Hannah Coulter, 2004
1998
Jayber Crow, 2000
The Wheel, 1982
The Memory of Old Jack, 1974 Nathan Coulter, 1960
Essay
A Place on Earth, 1967
Another Turn of the Crank, 1996
Remembering, 1988
The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of
That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, 2004
Wendell Berry, 2002
Watch with Me and Six Other Stories of the
Citizenship Papers, 2003
Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife,
A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural & Agricultural,
Miss Minnie, Née Quinch, 1994
1972
The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William
The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural &
Membership, 1986
Agricultural, 1981
A World Lost, 1996
Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work, 1990 The Hidden Wound, 1970
Poetry
Home Economics: Fourteen Essays, 1987
The Broken Ground, 1964
Life Is a Miracle, 2000
Clearing, 1977
The Long-Legged House, 2004
Collected Poems: 1951-1982, 1982
Recollected Essays: 1965-1980, 1981
The Country of Marriage, 1973
Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, 1992
Entries, 1994
Standing by Words, 1983
Farming: A Hand Book, 1970
The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River
Given: New Poems, 2005
Gorge, 1971
Openings, 1968
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture,
A Part, 1980
1977
Sabbaths: Poems, 1987
What Are People For?, 1990
Sayings and Doings, 1975 28
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I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. —Wendell Berry List of Included Works Are You Alright? Meditation in the Spring Rain The Supplanting Sowing Our Children Coming of Age A Praise Local Knowledge in the Age of Information Bibliography Berry, Wendell. The Selected Poems of Wendell
Berry. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998. Print. Berry, Wendell. That Distant Land: The Collected
Stories. Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004. Print.
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Designed by Amanda Rockwell Sam Fox School of Design Washington University in St. Louis December 9, 2014 Typography II Typeset in Burbank Small Medium and Amatic