Wendell Berry

A critical inquiry into the ways Americans have exploited and continue to exploit the land that sustains them, tracing attitudes toward and methods of farming from the eighteenth century to the present

Culture & Agriculture

The Unsettling of America

The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home.

With grace and conviction, Wendell Berry shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy―the natural world will not survive it.

Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.

The Essential Wendell Berry

The World-Ending Fire

The author's celebration of life in a Kentucky town continues with his latest installment--the stories of Port William matriarch Hannah Coulter, an eighty-year-old woman who has been widowed twice and has watched the town's sense of community gradually deteriorate. Reprint.

Hannah Coulter

'Do I wish to keep up with the times? No. My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can' The great American poet, novelist and environmental activist argues for a life lived slowly.

Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

If you stop and look around you, you'll start to see. Tall marigolds darkening. A spring wind blowing. The woods awake with sound. On the wooden porch, your love smiling. Dew-wet red berries in a cup. On the hills, the beginnings of green, clover and grass to be pasture. The fowls singing and then settling for the night. Bright, silent, thousands of stars. You come into the peace of simple things. From the author of the 'compelling' and 'luminous' essays of The World-Ending Firecomes a slim volume of poems. Tender and intimate, these are consoling songs of hope and of healing; short, simple meditations on love, death, friendship, memory and belonging. They celebrate and elevate what is sensuous about life, and invite us to pause and appreciate what is good in life, to stop and savour our fleeting moments of earthly enjoyment. And, when fear for the future keeps us awake at night, to come into the peace of wild things.

The Peace of Wild Things

Two spiritual prose poems precede more than twenty essays in which the author argues for the diversification of local economies, elucidates how art participates in our lives, and urges that humanity collectively seek harmony between human economy and natu

Essays

What are People For?

In a rural Kentucky river town, "Old Jack" Beechum, a retired farmer, sees his life again through the shades of one burnished day in September 1952. Bringing the earthiness of America's past to mind, The Memory of Old Jack conveys the truth and integrity of the land and the people who live from it. Through the eyes of one man can be seen the values Americans strive to recapture as we arrive at the next century. - Back cover.

The Memory of Old Jack

A collection of essays that address the origins of the food you eat, including how organically-grown food measures up against locally-grown produce, and how the differences between large and small farms can affect the food on your table. Original.

On Farming and Food

Bringing it to the Table

"Read [him] with pencil in hand, make notes, and hope that somehow our country and the world will soon come to see the truth that is told here." --The New York Times Book Review In this collection of essays, first published in 1993, Wendell Berry continues his work as one of America's most necessary social commentators. With wisdom and clear, ringing prose, he tackles head-on some of the most difficult problems which faced near the end of the twentieth-century. Berry elucidates connections between sexual brutality and economic brutality, and the role of art and free speech. He forcefully addresses America's unabashed pursuit of self-liberation, which he says is "still the strongest force now operating in our society." As individuals turn away from their community, they conform to a "rootless and placeless monoculture of commercial expectations and products," buying into the very economic system which is destroying the earth, our communities, and all they represent. Throughout the book Berry asks, What is appropriate? What is worth conserving from our past and preserving in our present? What is it to be human and truly connected to others? What does it mean to be free?

Eight Essays

Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community

'Nathan Coulter' begins Wendell Berry's sequence of novels about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky-a setting that is taking its place alongside Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and Winesburg, Ohio, as one of our most distinctive and recognizable literary locales.

A Novel

Nathan Coulter

The celebrated writer disputes the assertations of E.O. Wilson's Consilience, claiming that religion and art are not subject to modern science. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

An Essay Against Modern Superstition

Life is a Miracle

"Berry richly evokes Port William's farmlands and hamlets, and his characters are fiercely individual, yet mutually protective in everything they do. . . . His sentences are exquisitely constructed, suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world".--New York Times Book Review.

Five Stories

Fidelity

Argues that white racism has been detrimental to whites as well as Blacks, discusses the implications of slavery, and looks at the impact of slavery on the author's life

The Hidden Wound

In print again after twenty-one years, this collection of six essays by the celebtrated environmentalist explores the attacks on language occuring within American culture, covering conversation, advertising, and poetry, among other topics. Reprint.

Standing by Words

Joanna Macy

Bill Plotkin

Vandana Shiva

Richard Rohr

David Loy

Thích Nhất Hạnh

John Stanley

Mary Evelyn Tucker

John Grim

Thomas Berry

Sandra Ingerman

Winona LaDuke

Satish Kumar

Geneen Marie Haugen

Jules Cashford

Susan Murphy

Pir Zia Inayat-Khan

The Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh was asked what we need to do to save our world. "What we most need to do," he replied, "is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying.” Our present ecological crisis is the greatest man-made disaster this planet has ever faced—its accelerating climate change, species depletion, pollution and acidification of the oceans. A central but rarely addressed aspect of this crisis is our forgetfulness of the sacred nature of creation, and how this affects our relationship to the environment. There is a pressing need to articulate a spiritual response to this ecological crisis. This is vital and necessary if we are to help bring the world as a living whole back into balance.

The Cry of the Earth

Spiritual Ecology

Berry’s Sabbath Poems embrace much that is elemental to human life—beauty, death, peace, and hope. In his preface, Berry writes about the growing audience for public poetry readings. While he sees poetry in the public eye as a good thing, Berry asks us to recognize the private life of the poem. These Sabbath Poems were written ""in silence, in solitude, and mainly out of doors,"" and tell us about ""moments when heart and mind are open and aware." Wendell Berry is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of the truths revealed.

The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

A Timbered Choir

First published in 1972, “Think Little” is cultural critic and agrarian Wendell Berry at his best: prescient about the dire environmental consequences of our mentality of greed and exploitation, yet hopeful that we will recognize war and oppression and pollution not as separate issues, but aspects of the same. “Think Little” is presented here alongside one of Berry’s most popular and personal essays, “A Native Hill.” This gentle essay of recollection is told alongside a poetic lesson in geography, as Berry explains at length and in detail, that what he stands for is what he stands on. Each palm–size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most–beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint Press: cutting–edge, wide–ranging, and independent.

Think Little

Embittered by the loss of his hand in an accident and his growing alienation from his wife and children, Andy Catlett flees to San Francisco where his midnight walk through the city and accompanying memories initiate his emotional recovery

Remembering

These essays and stories present Berry's New Agrarian vision in one of its most complete and troubling manifestations since The Unsettling of America.

New Agrarian Writings

The Art of Loading Brush

The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry gathers one hundred poems written between 1957 and 1996. Chosen by the author, these pieces have been selected from each of nine previously published collections. The rich work in this volume reflects the development of Berry’s poetic sensibility over four decades. Focusing on themes that have occupied his work for years—land and nature, family and community, tradition as the groundwork for life and culture—The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry celebrates the broad range of this vital and transforming poet.

Wendell Berry

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