Bøger af Wendell Berry

First published in A Continuous Harmony in 1972, "Think Little" is cultural critic and agrarian Berry at his best: prescient about the dire environmental consequences of people's mentality of greed and exploitation, yet hopeful that they will recognize war and oppression and pollution not as separate issues, but aspects of the same.

The second volume of the Library of America's definitive two-volume selection of the nonfiction writings of our greatest living advocate for sustainable culture.Writing with elegance and clarity, Wendell Berry is a compassionate and compelling voice for our time of political and cultural distrust and division, whether expounding the joys and wisdom of nonindustrial agriculture, relishing the pleasure of eating food produced locally by people you know, or giving voice to a righteous contempt for hollow innovation. He is our most important writer on the cultural crisis posed by industrialization and mass consumerism, and the vital role of rural, sustainable farming in preserving the planet as well as our national character. Now, in celebration of Berry's extraordinary six-decade-long career, Library of America presents a two-volume selection of his nonfiction writings prepared in close consultation with the author. In this second volume, forty-four essays from ten works turn to issues of political and social debate--big government, science and religion, and the meaning of citizenship following the tragedy of 9/11. Also included is his Jefferson Lecture to the National Endowment for the Humanities, "It All Turns on Affection" (2012). Berry's essays remain timely, even urgent today, and will resonate with anyone interested in our relationship to the natural world and especially with a younger, politically engaged generation invested in the future welfare of the planet.INCLUDES: Life is a Miracle AND SELECTIONS FROM Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community Another Turn of the Crank Citizenship Papers The Way of Ignorance What Matters? Imagination in Place It All Turns on Affection Our Only World The Art of Loading BrushLIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

"e;The Art of Loading Brush is singular in Berry's corpus."e; -The Paris ReviewWendell Berry's profound critique of American culture has entered its sixth decade, and in this gathering he reaches with deep devotion toward a long view of agrarian philosophy. The Art of Loading Brush is an energetic mix of essays, stories, and a poem, which explore agrarian ideals as they present themselves historically and as they might apply to our work today. Filled with insights and new revelations from a mind thorough in its considerations and careful in its presentations, The Art of Loading Brush is a necessary and timely collection.

This collection of Berry’s essays and poems—all written outdoors on the Sabbath—“[shines] with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life” (The Christian Science Monitor) More than thirty–five years ago, Wendell Berry began spending his sabbaths outdoors, when the weather allowed, walking and wandering around familiar territory, seeking a deep intimacy only time could provide. These walks sometimes yielded poems. Each year since, he has completed a series of these poems dated by the year of its composition. This new sequence provides a virtual syllabus for all of Berry’s cultural and agricultural work in concentrated form. Many of these poems—including a sequence at mid–year of 2014—were written on a small porch in the woods, a place of stillness and reflection, a vantage point “of the one / life of the forest composed / of uncountable lives in countless / years, each life coherent itself within / the coherence, the great composure, of all.” Recently Berry has been reflecting on more than a half century of reading, to discover and to delight in the poetical, spiritual, and cultural roots of his work. In The Presence of Nature in the Natural World, Berry’s survey begins with Alan of Lille’s twelfth–century work, The Plaint of Nature. From the Bible through Chaucer, from Milton to Pope, from Wordsworth to the moderns, Berry’s close reading is exhilarating. Moving from the canon of poetry to the sayings and texts found in agriculture and science, closely presented, we gain new appreciation for the complexity of the issues faced in the twenty–first century by the struggling community of humans on earth. With this long essay appended to these new Sabbath Poems, the result is an unusual book of depth and engagement. A new collection of Wendell Berry poems is always an occasion for celebration, and this eccentric gathering is especially so.

In 1995, Wendell Berry’s Roots to the Earth was published in portfolio form by West Meadow Press. The wood etchings of celebrated artist and wood engraver, Wesley Bates, were printed from the original wood blocks on handmade Japanese paper. In 2014, this work was reprinted at Larkspur Press, along with additional poems. It is now with great pleasure that Counterpoint reproduces this collaborative work for trade publication, as well as expanding it with the inclusion of a short story, “The Branch Way of Doing,” and additional engravings by Bates.In his introduction to the 2014 collection, Bates wrote: "As our society moves toward urbanization, the majority of the population views agriculture from an increasingly detached position. . . In his poetry [Berry] reveals tenderness and love as well as anger and uncertainty. . . The wood engravings in this collection are intended to be companion pieces to. . . the way he expresses what it is to be a farmer."

Tom Pohrt spent years gathering poems by Wendell Berry that he thought children might read and appreciate, making sketches to accompany his selection. Terrapin is the result, a volume of twenty–one poems with dozens of sketches, drawings, and watercolors. In full color, we have not only a volume of staggering beauty but a consummate example of the collaborative effort that is fine bookmaking; the perfect gift for children, grandchildren, or anyone who remains a lover of the book as physical object.

"e;The courage of a book, it has been said, is that it looks away from nothing. Here is a brave book."e; The Charlotte Observer "e;Berry says that these recent essays mostly say again what he has said before. His faithful readers may think he hasn't, however, said any of it better before."e; Booklist (starred review)"e;His refusal to abandon the local for the global, to sacrifice neighborliness, community integrity, and economic diversity for access to Wal-Mart, has never seemed more appealing, nor his questions of personal accountability more powerful."e; Kirkus ReviewsThere are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with "e;patriot"e; offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry's application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life's blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Citizenship Papers collects nineteen new essays, from celebrations of exemplary lives to critiques of American life, including "e;A Citizen's Response [to the new National Security Strategy]"e;-a ringing call of caution to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

During the otherwise quiet course of his life as a poet, Wendell Berry has become “mad” at what contemporary society has made of its land, its communities, and its past. This anger reaches its peak in the poems of the Mad Farmer, an open–ended sequence he's found himself impelled to continue against his better instincts. These poems can take the shape of manifestos, meditations, insults, Whitmanic fits and ravings—these are often funny in spite of themselves. The Mad Farmer is a character as necessary, perhaps, as he is regrettable.Here are gathered the individual poems from Berry's various collections to offer the teachings of this amazing American voice. After the great success of the lovely Window Poems, Bob Baris of the Press on Scroll Road returns to design and produce an edition illustrated with etchings by Abigail Rover. James Baker Hall and William Kloefkorn offer poems here that also show how the Mad Farmer has escaped into the work of others. The whole is a wonderful testimony to the power of anger and humor to bring even the most terrible consequences into a focus otherwise impossible to obtain.

Over the years, Wendell Berry has sought to understand and confront the financial structure of modern society and the impact of developing late capitalism on American culture. There is perhaps no more demanding or important critique available to contemporary citizens than Berrys writings just as there is no vocabulary more given to obfuscation than that of economics as practiced by professionals and academics. Berry has called upon us to return to the basics. He has traced how the clarity of our economic approach has eroded over time, as the financial asylum was overtaken by the inmates, and citizens were turned from consumers entertained and distracted to victims, threatened by a future of despair and disillusion.For this collection, Berry offers essays from over the last 25 years, alongside new essays about the recent economic collapse, including Money Versus Goods and Faustian Economics, treatises of great alarm and courage. He offers advice and perspective that should be heeded by all concerned as our society attempts to steer from its present chaos and recession to a future of hope and opportunity. With urgency and clarity, Berry asks us to look toward a true sustainable commonwealth, grounded in realistic Jeffersonian principles applied to our present day.

Ranging from America's insatiable consumerism and household economies to literary subjects and America's attitude toward waste, here Berry gracefully navigates from one topic to the next. He speaks candidly about the ills plaguing America and the growing gap between people and the land. Despite the somber nature of these essays, Berry's voice and prose provide an underlying sense of faith and hope. He frames his reflections with poetic responsibility, standing up as a firm believer in the power of the human race not only to fix its past mistakes but to build a future that will provide a better life for all.

When he accepted the invitation to deliver The Jefferson Lecture—our nation’s highest honor for distinguished intellectual achievement—Wendell Berry decided to take on the obligation of thinking again about the problems that have engaged him throughout his long career. He wanted a fresh start, not only in looking at the groundwork of the problems facing our nation and the earth itself, but in gaining hope from some examples of repair and healing even in these times of Late Capitalism and its destructive contagions. As a poet and writer he understood already that much can be gleaned from looking at the vocabulary of these problems themselves and how we describe them. And he settled on “affection” as a method of engagement and solution. The result is the greatest speech he has delivered in his six decades of public life. It All Turns on Affection will take its place alongside The Unsettling of America and The Gift of Good Land as major testaments to the power and clarity of his contribution to American thought.We have taken this opportunity to include a small handful of other recent essays and a wonderful conversation between Mr. Berry, his wife Tanya Berry, and the head of the National Endowment of the Humanities Jim Leech, which took place just after the award was announced. The result offers a wonderful continuation of the long conversation Berry has had with his readers over many years and as well as a fine introduction to his life and work.

First published in 1969 and out of print for more than twenty?five years, The Long?Legged House was Wendell Berry's first collection of essays, the inaugural work introducing many of the central issues that have occupied him over the course of his career. Three essays at the heart of this volume―?The Rise,? ?The Long?Legged House,? and ?A Native Hill?―are essays of homecoming and memoir, as the writer finds his home place, his native ground, his place on earth. As he later wrote, ?What I stand for is what I stand on,? and here we see him beginning the acts of rediscovery and resettling.

"This book is broad and leisurely and important. Something like the river itself on which Wendell Berry lives. It is full of wide and flowing thoughts and one thing leads to another in the manner that nature intended―or used to. The language ranges from the grave and beautiful to the sharp and specific, depending on the need to express the vast variety of subjects he presents."—The NationThe title of this book is taken from an account by Thomas F. Hornbein on his travels in the Himalayas. ""It seemed to me,"" Horenbein wrote, ""that here man lived in continuous harmony with the land, as much as briefly a part of it as all its other occupants."" Wendell Berry's second collection of essays, A Continuous Harmony was first published in 1972, and includes the seminal ""Think Little,"" which was printed in The Last Whole Earth Catalogue and reprinted around the globe, and the splendid centerpiece, ""Discipline and Hope,"" an insightful and articulate essay making a case for what he calls ""a new middle."

Only someone who values land enough to farm a hillside for more than thirty years could write about a wild place so lovingly. Wendell Berry just as easily steps into Kentucky's Red River Gorge and makes the observations of a poet as he does step away to view his subject with the keen, unflinching eye of an essayist. The inimitable voice of Wendell Berry—at once frank and lovely—is our guide as we explore this unique wilderness.Located in eastern Kentucky and home to 26,000 acres of untamed river, rock formations, historical sites, unusual vegetation and wildlife, the Gorge very nearly fell victim to a man–made lake thirty years ago. "No place is to be learned like a textbook," Berry tells us, and so through revealing the Gorge's corners and crevices, its ridges and rapids, his words not only implore us to know more but to venture there ourselves. Infused with his very personal perspective and enhanced by the startling photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, The Unforeseen Wilderness draws the reader in to celebrate an extraordinary natural beauty and to better understand what threatens it.

The America many people would like to believe in is convincingly explored in this volume of poems by a writer close to the heart of things. The sanity and eloquence of these poems spring from the land in Kentucky where Wendell Berry was born, married, lives, farms, and writes. From classic pastoral themes both lyrical and reflective, to a verse play, to a dramatic narrative and the manic, entertaining, prescient ravings of Berry's Mad Farmer, these poems show a unity of language and consciousness, skill and sensitivity, that has placed Wendell Berry at the front rank of contemporary American poets.

Wendell Berry proposes, and earnestly hopes, that people will learn once more to care for their local communities, and so begin a restoration that might spread over our entire nation and beyond. The renewed development of local economies would help preserve rural diversity despite the burgeoning global economy that threatens to homogenize and compromise communities all over the world.From modern health care to the practice of forestry, from local focus to national resolve, Berry argues, there can never be a separation between global ecosystems and human communitiesthe two are intricately connected, and the health and survival of one depends upon the other.Provocative, intimate, and thoughtful, Another Turn of the Crank reaches to the heart of Berrys concern and vision for the future, for America and for the world.

An urgent, visionary, and heartfelt collection of essays focused on recovering deeper, time–honored values against the ravages of modern society.In six elegant, linked literary essays, Berry considers the degeneration of language that is manifest throughout our culture, from poetry to politics, from conversation to advertising, and he shows how the ever–widening cleft between the words and their referents mirrors the increasing isolation of individuals and their communities from the land. “This skillfully conceived book is one of the strongest contemporary arguments for literary tradition: a challenging credo, un–glib, calmly assured, clearly illuminating—and required reading for those seriously interested in the interplay between literature, ethics, and morality.” —Kirkus Reviews “[Berry’s] poems, novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of America’s agrarian, Jeffersonian ideal.” —Publishers Weekly

For more than fifty years, Wendell Berry has been telling us stories about Port William, a mythical town on the banks of the Kentucky River, populated over the years by a cast of unforgettable characters living in a single place over a long time. In this new collection, the author’s first piece of new fiction since the publication of Andy Catlett in 2006, the stories date’s range from 1864, when Rebecca Dawe finds herself in her own reflection at the end of the Civil War, to one from 1991 when Grover Gibbs’ widow, Beulah, attends the auction as her home place is offered for sale.It feels as if the entire membership, all the Catletts, Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, the Rowanberrys, Laura Milby, the preacher’s wife, Kate Helen Branch, Andy’s dog, Mike, nearly everyone returns with a story or two, to fill in the gaps in this long tale. Those just now joining the Membership will be charmed. Those who’ve attended before will be enriched.The story of the community of Port William is one of the great works in American literature. Published in the author’s 78th year, this collection, the tenth volume in the series, is the perfect occasion to celebrate his huge achievement.

Includes 20 color plates of Hubbard's own paintings, along with several photographs of Anna and Harlan Hubbard. Wendell Berry is also the author of Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy. See other books in the series Blazer Lectures.

Unfortunately, on occasions too frequent and destructive to enumerate, the teachings of Christ have been either ignored or distorted by the very people calling themselves Christian. Whether directed towards social intolerance or attitudes of warlike aggression, these right–wing citizens have claimed a power of influence that far exceeds their numbers. Blessed Are the Peacemakers collects the sayings of Jesus, selected by Wendell Berry, who contributes an essay of introduction. This is a book of inspiration and prayerful compassion, a ringing call to action at a time when our country and the world it once led stand at a dangerous crossroads.