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Leavings: Poems Paperback – April 1, 2011
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“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.
- Print length144 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCounterpoint
- Publication dateApril 1, 2011
- Dimensions4.9 x 0.5 x 7.9 inches
- ISBN-10158243624X
- ISBN-13978-1582436241
"All the Little Raindrops: A Novel" by Mia Sheridan for $10.39
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About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Counterpoint; Edition Unstated (April 1, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 144 pages
- ISBN-10 : 158243624X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1582436241
- Item Weight : 5 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.9 x 0.5 x 7.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,069,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,561 in American Poetry (Books)
- #6,491 in Poetry Themes & Styles (Books)
- #222,637 in Genre Literature & Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Wendell E. Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be ushered into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Guy Mendes (Guy Mendes) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Customers find the character flaws clear, poignant, and powerful. They also describe the stories as interesting and lovely. Readers also praise the poetic style as well written.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the poetic style of the book well-written, lovingly rendered, and unmoving. They also say they are pleased with the book and its content.
"...In that sense these poems are very gratefully received; it is, after all, November and there are too few such walks left to me ...and to you...." Read more
"...for the earth and its creatures is made clear in this beautiful collection of work...." Read more
"Well written collection of poems." Read more
"...Leavings" is plainly spoken, lovingly rendered, and unmoving in its insistence for a better way." Read more
Customers find the character flaws in the book poignant, with a command of word meaning and nuance. They also say the book takes the reader on a painful but beautiful journey.
"...This small collection takes the reader on a painful but beautiful journey, a shared pilgrimage down familiar paths measured in ever slower and more..." Read more
"...He has a command of word meaning and nuance, grammar and punctuation that excels that of most writers just a generation removed from his own...." Read more
"...Read the poems about marriage, they are full of deep truths as I felt when my wife of 44 years died." Read more
"...on, Wendell Berry's poems have only strengthened in their clarity, poignancy, and power. I have given this book to several friends as a gift...." Read more
Customers find the stories interesting and lovely, with a refreshing mix of funny stories and touching poems.
"...An interesting and lovely journey." Read more
"...This book of poems in particular I found had a refreshing mix of funny stories/poems and touching and thought provoking poems as well...." Read more
"...He's the poet laureate of practical, useful joys and a national treasure." Read more
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The book is in two parts: the first part is a potpourri, an all-too-short assortment of letter poems, occasional pieces, and brief reflections (the 20 titled poems in the collection are here); the second part is entitled "Sabbaths 2005-2008" and carries the tag line, "How may a human being come to rest?" (54 numbered poems make up this section.)
One of my favorite poems in this collection, one I know I'll return to many times, occurs early in Part I and is entitled simply "An Embarrassment." The severe economy of language--3 or 4 word lines mostly, mostly 1 or 2 syllable words--conveys the embarrassment of friends who regularly offer thanks for a meal when they eat alone but who are now trying to decide whether to do so when they are together. One of them, having decided to make a go of the prayer, leaves (!) them both embarrassed as the prayer falls awfully flat. I'll not ruin the ending for you, but it is a Berry-esque show stopper. For someone who makes his living as a pastor, that one poem was worth the price of admission. But there are many others from this book that will now join my ever growing list of Berry favorites: e.g., "A Speech to the Garden Club of America," which admonishes us to go "back to school, this time in gardens." Or "While Attending the Annual Convocation of Cause Theorists and Bigbangists at the Local Provincial Research University, the Mad Farmer Intercedes from the Back Row." (If you've read the other Mad Farmer Poems, you'll appreciate the appropriateness of this addition to the corpus.)
I have been reading (and re-reading) Wendell Berry's work for quite a while now. That means I've heard many of the words and seen many of the ideas before. But these poems are new, encountered for the first time like today's bracing walk in a familiar woods I've visited many times. The woods and the friends with whom we walk, like the day itself, are the same as they've always been but also different on this day. In that sense these poems are very gratefully received; it is, after all, November and there are too few such walks left to me ...and to you.
Do yourself a favor. Get the book and spend time with it out of doors while the leaves are still falling, or indoors by the fire in the depths of winter.
Sometimes these meditations are dark. Consider "Sabbaths 2005" (XII):
If we have become incapable
of thought, then the brute-thought
of mere power and mere greed
will think for us.
If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us.
If we have no compassion,
we will suffer alone, we will suffer
alone the destruction of ourselves.
These are merely the laws of this world
as known to Shakespeare, as known to Milton.
When we cease from human thought,
a low and effective cunning
stirs in the most inhuman minds.
This "low and effective cunning" is what sees geography as a commercial asset, an asset to be made over, industrialized and changed forever. While it is not a demand for a "return to pure nature" - that is not what Berry argues here - but it is a romantic notion, to be sure, one grounded in Berry's Christian faith, one that sees people intimately connected to the land.
And then the tone changes, and Berry describes crossing a stream, but still in the same reverent terms. From "The Book of Camp Branch:"
Going down stone by stone,
the song of the water changes,
changing the way I walk
which changes my thought
as I go. Stone to stone
the stream flows. Stone to stone
the walker goes. The words
stand stone still until
the flow moves them, changing
the sound - a new word -
a new place to step or stand.
He's describing a kind of poetry of nature, with the flow of water moving stone to stone, the walker following behind the flow, and the flow creating a new place for the walk to stand.
Berry's writing is a collective whole, or perhaps holistically collective. Whether it his novels, short stories, articles, essays or poems, the same themes course throughout - themes about the land, about people and they become part of the land, the modern loss of connection to that land, and a hope for something better. He rages against the forces, "industrial humanity, an alien species," whom he sees as agents of destruction, not least for the fact that they don't know "one big story, of the world and the world's end...They know names and little stories" (Sabbaths 2007 V).
These meditations and observations are the themes and philosophy that we know as the Wendell Berry trademark - the land, the geography of the heart, upon which he has staked a literary and moral claim. "Leavings" is plainly spoken, lovingly rendered, and unmoving in its insistence for a better way.
Read the poems about marriage, they are full of deep truths as I felt when my wife of 44 years died.
Top reviews from other countries
"Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out."
I shall be reading more of Wendell Berry.