WEN
DEL
BER
RY
Selected works of
WEN
DEL
BER
RY
Texts by Wendell Berry Design by Ji Eun Seo
Selected Works of
Sam Fox Press, lnc.
“Eve
ryth
ing
in th
e Cr
eati
on is
rela
ted
to e
very
thin
g el
se a
nd d
epen
dent
on
ever
ythi
ng e
lse”
About Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry loves amd farms with his family in Henry
County, Kentucky, and is the author of more than thirty
books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Berry’s life, his
farm work, his writing and teaching, his home and family,
and all that each involves are extraordinarily integrated.
He understands his writing as an attempt to elucidate
certain connections, primarily the interrelationships and
interdependencies of man and the natural world.
The traditional community is one of Berry’s central
metaphors for cultural and natural harmony. Such
a Community is highly intricate alliance in which
individuals function as “parts” of a membership, each
depending on and affecting all the others. The traditional
community, like the traditional farms within it, is a model
of interdependency.
“A c
omm
unit
y is
the
men
tal a
nd s
piri
tual
con
diti
on
of k
now
ing
that
the
plac
e is
sha
red,
and
that
the
peop
le w
ho s
hare
the
plac
e de
fine
and
limit
the
poss
ibili
ties
of e
ach
othe
r’s
lives
”
3 I 4
2 I 3
The health of the oceans depends on the health of rivers depends on the health of small streams; the health of small streams depends on the health of their watersheds. The health of the wather is exactly the same as the health of the land; the health of small place is exactly the same as the health of large places.Windell Berry, excerpt from “Contempt for Small Places”
5 I 6
It was an old community. They all had worked together a long time. They all knew what each one was good at. When they worked together, not much needed to be explained. Windell Berry, excerpt from “A Jonquil for Mary Penn”
7 I 8
A Jonquil for Mary Penn (excerpt)
It was a different world, a new world to her, that she came
into then—a world of poverty and community. They were
in a neighborhood of six households, counting their own,
all within half a mile of one another. Besides themselves
there were Braymer and Josie Hardy and their children;
Tom Hardy and his wife, also named Josie; Walter and
Thelma Cotman and their daughter, Irene; Jonah and
Daisy Hample and their children; and Uncle Isham and
Aunt Frances Quail, who were Thelma Cotman’s and Daisy
Hample’s parents. The two Josies, to save confusion, were
called Josie Braymer and Josie Tom. Josie Tom was Walter
Cotman’s sister.
(continued from page 8)
In the world that Mary Penn had given up, a place of far
larger and richer farms, work was sometimes exchanged,
but the families were conscious of themselves in a way that
set them apart from one another. Here in this new world,
neighbors were always working together. “Many hands
make light work,” Uncle Isham Quail loved to say, though
his own old hands were no longer able to work much.
Some work only the men did together, like haying
and harvesting the corn. Some work only the women
did together: sewing or quilting or wallpepering or
housecleaning; and whenever the men were together
working, the women would be cooking. Some work the men
and women did together: harvesting tobacco or killing hogs
or any other job that needed many hands. It was an old
community. They all had worked together a long time. They
all knew what each one was good at. When they worked
together, not much needed to be explained. When they
went down to the little weatherboarded church at Goforth
on Sunday morning, they were glad to see one another and
had much to say, though they had seen each other almost
daily during the week.
9 I 10
February 2, 1968
In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.
11 I 12
Winter Night Poem for Mary
As I started home after dark
I looked into the sky and saw the new moon,
an old man with a basket on his arm.
He walked among the cedars in the bare woods.
They stood like guardians, dark
as he passed. He might have been singing,
or he might not. He might have been sowing
the spring flowers, or he might not. But I saw him
with his basket, going along the hilltop.
13 I 14
The Satisfactions at the Mad Farmer
Growing weather; enough rain;
the cow’s udder tight with milk;
the peach tree bent with its yield;
honey golden in the white comb-,
the pastures deep in clover and grass,
enough, and more than enough;
the ground, new worked, moist
and yielding underfoot, the feet
comfortable in it as roots;
15 I 16
“To
enri
ch th
e ea
rth
I hav
e so
wed
clo
ver a
nd g
rass
to g
row
and
die
. I h
ave
plow
ed in
the
seed
s of
win
ter g
rain
s an
d of
va
riou
s le
gum
es,
thei
r gro
wth
to b
e pl
owed
in
to e
nric
h th
e ea
rth.
”
“To
enri
ch th
e ea
rth
I hav
e so
wed
clo
ver a
nd g
rass
to g
row
and
die
. I h
ave
plow
ed in
the
seed
s of
win
ter g
rain
s an
d of
va
riou
s le
gum
es,
thei
r gro
wth
to b
e pl
owed
in
to e
nric
h th
e ea
rth.
”
17 I 18
Enriching the Earth
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
The Man Born to FarmingThe grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?
19 I 20
21 I 22
Bibliography
Evans, Walker. Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm
Security Administration, 1935-1938: A Catalogue of
Photographic prints Available from the Farm Security
Administration Collection in the Library of Congress,
New York: De Capo Press, 1973
Gerster, Georg. Amber Wales of Grain: America’s
Farmlands from Above, New York: Harper Weldon
Owen, 1990
Berry, Wendell. A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural
and Agricultural. (CH) New York: Harcourt, 1972.
Ditsky, John. “Wendell Berry: Homage to the Apple
Tree.” Modern Poetry Studies 2.1 (1971): 7-15.
Driskell, Leon V. “Wendell Berry.” Dictionary of Literary
Biography 5: 62-66.
Ehrlich, Arnold W. “Wendell Berry” (An interview with
Wendell Berry). Publishers Weekly 5 Sept. 1977: 10-11.
Norman, Gurney. From This Valley. Kentucky
Educational Television Video.
Prunty, Wyatt. “Myth, History, and Myth Again.” The
Southern Review 20 (1984): 958-68.
Tolliver, Gary. “Wendell Berry.” Dictionary of Literary
Biography 6: 9-14.
List of PublicationsEssay
Contempt for Small Places
Short Story
A Jonquil for Mary Penn
Poems
February 2, 1968
Winter Night Poem for Mary
The Satisfactions at the Mad Farmer
Enriching the Earth
The Man Born to Farming
23 I 24
Sam Fox Press, lnc.
© Ji Eun Seo
This book was designed and printed on April 2011 by Ji Eun
Seo in Steinberg Studio at Washington University in St. Louis.
Typeface used includes Meta Book Roman and Meta Bold Roman.
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