Thank you for posting. His passing is a true loss. Even thought she has been gone longer, coupling Mary Oliver’s poetry with Wendell’s bring the message of nature into strong focus!!
Barbara my Dear, If I may call you that … because I so strongly feel it … Your say, "Poets—and Mr. Berry among the finest—wield the gift of sifting through life’s many, many tangled threads, and pulling up the finest silken ones. Holding them to the light, and capturing in pure precision—uncanny precision, the sort that catches your breathing right there and then because their vision is so beyond the ordinary." I would say you give to so many the same attributions for your readers and I (we) are grateful! Fondly, Michael Horvich
“For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
This simple, and eloquent, sentence evokes such deep emotions from me. It is the last line of “The Peace of Wild Things”, one of my favorite poems. It is as relevant today as when Berry wrote it 58 years ago.
i love that poem, too, and read it over and over in a friend’s last days. to “rest in the grace of the world” is as freeing as it comes, especially when last breaths come more and more slowly……digging into Wendell Berry’s library i am finding treasures that aren’t so widely known, and ohhhhhhhh they oughta be! thank you for bringing this line here this day…..and bless you….
i was LITERALLY just looking for your email so i could send you a note to say my heart skips a pit-a-pat when i see your name pop up. thank YOU for pulling up a chair, my sweet sweet friend….
I. Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible. Those who have "thought globally" (and among them the most successful have been imperial governments and multinational corporations) have done so by means of simplifications too extreme and oppressive to merit the name of thought. Global thinkers have been, and will be, dangerous people. National thinkers tend to be dangerous also; we now have national thinkers in the northeastern United States who look upon Kentucky as a garbage dump.
II. Global thinking can only be statistical. Its shallowness is exposed by the least intention to do something. Unless one is willing to be destructive on a very large scale, one cannot do something except locally, in a small place. Global thinking can only do to the globe what a space satellite does to it: reduce it, make a bauble of it. Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your space vehicle, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large, and full of beguiling nooks and crannies.
III. If we could think locally, we would do far better than we are doing now. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question "What will this do to our community?" tends toward the right answer for the world.
IV. If we want to put local life in proper relation to the globe, we must do so by imagination, charity, and forbearance, and by making local life as independent and self-sufficient as we can—not by the presumptuous abstractions of "global thought."
Ah, your appreciation, with your personal connections and recollections, is poetic. I only have "The Gift of Good Land," and it's been ages since I read it. Can you recommend three books (to start a Wendell Berry shelf)? Poetry and/or essays. ("Terrapin" might be an obvious choice.)
From two comments during today's session of Living Room Craft Talk with Ellen Bass, an online poetry writing (or just appreciation) class: Poetry is the human voice. And poetry can say the unsayable.
Soooo amazing you’re studying with Ellen B!!! As for Wendell, This Day, a collection of sabbath prayers through 2013, I believe. And I want to find a copy of Window Poems from 1968. I will owe you one more. I love the Sabbaths chapbooks too, year by year…when I get home I will peek at my shelf and see what I’ve missed….
The Window Poems sequence was in Wendell Berry’s book Openings, pages 37 - 59 (of the 1980 Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich paperback). The stand alone Window Poems book with wood prints came later from Counterpoint in 2007.
yes, yes. i should have been clearer: individual poems from the sequence, eventually published as Window Poems (limited edition 2003, and 2007) were found in 1968 in Openings. precisely as you clarified!! thank YOU.
My heart sings when yours does. You have been radiance to me since the first day I met you—which was maybe the first or second day of freshman year of HIGH SCHOOL, sweetheart. Dare we count the years???
Barbie-
Thank you for posting. His passing is a true loss. Even thought she has been gone longer, coupling Mary Oliver’s poetry with Wendell’s bring the message of nature into strong focus!!
and add annie dillard into the mix and we could read our way to euphoria with a dollop of grief stirred right in…..
Barbara my Dear, If I may call you that … because I so strongly feel it … Your say, "Poets—and Mr. Berry among the finest—wield the gift of sifting through life’s many, many tangled threads, and pulling up the finest silken ones. Holding them to the light, and capturing in pure precision—uncanny precision, the sort that catches your breathing right there and then because their vision is so beyond the ordinary." I would say you give to so many the same attributions for your readers and I (we) are grateful! Fondly, Michael Horvich
of course you may call me that, Michael my Dear! and bless you. it’s those silken threads we seek, non? you find them in miniature, my friend….
“For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
This simple, and eloquent, sentence evokes such deep emotions from me. It is the last line of “The Peace of Wild Things”, one of my favorite poems. It is as relevant today as when Berry wrote it 58 years ago.
i love that poem, too, and read it over and over in a friend’s last days. to “rest in the grace of the world” is as freeing as it comes, especially when last breaths come more and more slowly……digging into Wendell Berry’s library i am finding treasures that aren’t so widely known, and ohhhhhhhh they oughta be! thank you for bringing this line here this day…..and bless you….
Beauty in abundance, indeed! (And, btw, how did I not know you were born in Kentucky!? Well now.) xo
st elizabeth’s hospital, covington KY. makes me a southern writer (wink. wink.) i wish…….
😍
Thanks Barbie. You are a good egg.
i was LITERALLY just looking for your email so i could send you a note to say my heart skips a pit-a-pat when i see your name pop up. thank YOU for pulling up a chair, my sweet sweet friend….
I. Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible. Those who have "thought globally" (and among them the most successful have been imperial governments and multinational corporations) have done so by means of simplifications too extreme and oppressive to merit the name of thought. Global thinkers have been, and will be, dangerous people. National thinkers tend to be dangerous also; we now have national thinkers in the northeastern United States who look upon Kentucky as a garbage dump.
II. Global thinking can only be statistical. Its shallowness is exposed by the least intention to do something. Unless one is willing to be destructive on a very large scale, one cannot do something except locally, in a small place. Global thinking can only do to the globe what a space satellite does to it: reduce it, make a bauble of it. Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your space vehicle, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large, and full of beguiling nooks and crannies.
III. If we could think locally, we would do far better than we are doing now. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question "What will this do to our community?" tends toward the right answer for the world.
IV. If we want to put local life in proper relation to the globe, we must do so by imagination, charity, and forbearance, and by making local life as independent and self-sufficient as we can—not by the presumptuous abstractions of "global thought."
AMEN!!
Ah, your appreciation, with your personal connections and recollections, is poetic. I only have "The Gift of Good Land," and it's been ages since I read it. Can you recommend three books (to start a Wendell Berry shelf)? Poetry and/or essays. ("Terrapin" might be an obvious choice.)
From two comments during today's session of Living Room Craft Talk with Ellen Bass, an online poetry writing (or just appreciation) class: Poetry is the human voice. And poetry can say the unsayable.
Soooo amazing you’re studying with Ellen B!!! As for Wendell, This Day, a collection of sabbath prayers through 2013, I believe. And I want to find a copy of Window Poems from 1968. I will owe you one more. I love the Sabbaths chapbooks too, year by year…when I get home I will peek at my shelf and see what I’ve missed….
The Window Poems sequence was in Wendell Berry’s book Openings, pages 37 - 59 (of the 1980 Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich paperback). The stand alone Window Poems book with wood prints came later from Counterpoint in 2007.
Thanks for this post.
yes, yes. i should have been clearer: individual poems from the sequence, eventually published as Window Poems (limited edition 2003, and 2007) were found in 1968 in Openings. precisely as you clarified!! thank YOU.
i am adding The World-Ending Fire, more essays than poems, but essential, and right up your alley. i just put a copy on hold at my little library.
Beautiful! My heart is singing.
My heart sings when yours does. You have been radiance to me since the first day I met you—which was maybe the first or second day of freshman year of HIGH SCHOOL, sweetheart. Dare we count the years???
I think 55 my friend