Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry
Berry in December 2011
Born	(1934-08-05) August 5, 1934 Henry County, Kentucky, U.S.
Occupation	Poet, farmer, writer, activist, academic
Nationality	American
Education	University of Kentucky (B.A; M.A., English, 1957)
Genre	Fiction, poetry, essays
Subject	agriculture, rural life, community

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 inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Life

Berry was the first of four children born to John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and tobacco farmer in Henry County, Kentucky, and Virginia Erdman Berry. The families of both parents had farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. Berry attended secondary school at Millersburg Military Institute and then earned a B.A. and M.A. in English at the University of Kentucky, where, in 1956, he met another Kentucky writer-to-be, Gurney Norman. In 1957, he completed his M.A. and married Tanya Amyx. In 1958, he attended Stanford University's creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, studying under Stegner in a seminar that included Edward Abbey, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Ernest Gaines, Tillie Olsen, and Ken Kesey. Berry's first novel, Nathan Coulter, was published in April 1960.

A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship took Berry and his family to Italy and France in 1961, where he came to know Wallace Fowlie, critic and translator of French literature. From 1962 to 1964, he taught English at New York University's University College in the Bronx. In 1964, he began teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky, from which he resigned in 1977. During this time in Lexington, he came to know author Guy Davenport, as well as author and monk Thomas Merton and photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard.

In 1965, Berry, his wife, and his two children moved to a farm that he had purchased, Lane's Landing, and began growing corn and small grains on what eventually became a 125-acre (0.51 km²) homestead. Lane's Landing is in Henry County, Kentucky in north central Kentucky near Port Royal, and his parents' birthplaces, and is on the western bank of the Kentucky River, not far from where it flows into the Ohio River. Berry has farmed, resided, and written at Lane's Landing ever since. He has written about his early experiences on the land and about his decision to return to it in essays such as "The Long-Legged House" and "A Native Hill."

In the 1970s and the early 1980s, he edited and wrote for the Rodale Press, including its publications Organic Gardening and Farming and The New Farm. From 1987 to 1993, he returned to the English Department of the University of Kentucky. Berry has written at least twenty-five books (or chapbooks) of poems, sixteen volumes of essays, and eleven novels and short story collections. His writing is grounded in the notion that one's work ought to be rooted in and responsive to one's place.

Berry, who describes himself as "a person who takes the Gospel seriously," has criticized Christian organizations for failing to challenge cultural complacency about environmental degradation, and has shown a willingness to criticize what he perceives as the arrogance of some Christians. He is an advocate of Christian pacifism, as shown in his book Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings About Love, Compassion and Forgiveness (2005).

Berry is a fellow of Britain's Temenos Academy, a learned society devoted to the study of all faiths and spiritual pursuits; Berry publishes frequently in the annual Temenos Academy Review, funded by the Prince of Wales.

Activism

On February 10, 1968, Berry delivered "A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" during the Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft at the University of Kentucky in Lexington:

“ We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to 'win the hearts and minds of the people' by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. . . . I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war. ”

On June 3, 1979, Berry engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience against the construction of a nuclear power plant at Marble Hill, Indiana. He describes "this nearly eventless event" and expands upon his reasons for it in the essay "The Reactor and the Garden."

On February 9, 2003, Berry's essay titled "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States" was published as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. Berry opened the essay—a critique of the G. W. Bush administration's post-9/11 international strategy—by asserting that "The new National Security Strategy published by the White House in September 2002, if carried out, would amount to a radical revision of the political character of our nation."

On January 4, 2009, Berry and Wes Jackson, president of The Land Institute, published an op-ed article in The New York Times titled "A 50-Year Farm Bill." In July 2009 Berry, Jackson and Fred Kirschenmann, of The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, gathered in Washington DC to promote this idea. Berry and Jackson wrote, "We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities."

Also in January 2009, Berry released a statement against the death penalty, which began, "As I am made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life before birth, I am also made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life after birth." And in November 2009, Berry and 38 other writers from Kentucky wrote to Gov. Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway asking them to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in that state.

On March 2, 2009, Berry joined over 2,000 others in non-violently blocking the gates to a coal-fired power plant in Washington, D.C. No one was arrested.

On May 22, 2009, Berry, at a listening session in Louisville, spoke against the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). He said, "If you impose this program on the small farmers, who are already overburdened, you're going to have to send the police for me. I'm 75 years old. I've about completed my responsibilities to my family. I'll lose very little in going to jail in opposition to your program – and I'll have to do it. Because I will be, in every way that I can conceive of, a non-cooperator."

In October 2009, Berry combined with "the Berea-based Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF), along with several other non-profit organizations and rural electric co-op members" to petition against and protest the construction of a coal-burning power plant in Clark County, Kentucky. On February 28, 2011, the Kentucky Public Service Commission approved the cancellation of this power plant.

On December 20, 2009, due to the University of Kentucky's close association with coal interests in the state, Berry removed his papers from UK. He explained to the Lexington Herald-Leader, "I don't think the University of Kentucky can be so ostentatiously friendly to the coal industry … and still be a friend to me and the interests for which I have stood for the last 45 years. … If they love the coal industry that much, I have to cancel my friendship." In August 2012, the papers were donated to The Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, KY.

On September 28, 2010, Berry participated in a rally in Louisville during an EPA hearing on how to manage coal ash. Berry said, "The EPA knows that coal ash is poison. We ask it only to believe in its own findings on this issue, and do its duty."

Berry, with 14 other protesters, spent the weekend of February 12, 2011 locked in the Kentucky governor's office to demand an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. He was part of the environmental group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth that began their sit-in on Friday and left at midday Monday to join about 1,000 others in a mass outdoor rally.

In 2011, The Berry Center was established at New Castle, Kentucky, "for the purpose of bringing focus, knowledge and cohesiveness to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agriculture system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities."

Ideas

Berry's nonfiction serves as an extended conversation about the life he values. According to him, the good life includes sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of good food, husbandry, good work, local economics, the miracle of life, fidelity, frugality, reverence, and the interconnectedness of life. The threats Berry finds to this good simple life include: industrial farming and the industrialization of life, ignorance, hubris, greed, violence against others and against the natural world, the eroding topsoil in the United States, global economics, and environmental destruction. As a prominent defender of agrarian values, Berry's appreciation for traditional farming techniques, such as those of the Amish, grew in the 1970s, due in part to exchanges with Draft Horse Journal publisher Maurice Telleen. Berry has long been friendly to and supportive of Wes Jackson, believing that Jackson's agricultural research at The Land Institute lives out the promise of "solving for pattern" and using "nature as model."

Author Rod Dreher writes that Berry's "unshakable devotion to the land, to localism, and to the dignity of traditional life makes him both a great American and, to the disgrace of our age, a prophet without honor in his native land." Similarly, Bill Kauffman argues that "Among the tragedies of contemporary politics is that Wendell Berry, as a man of place, has no place in a national political discussion that is framed by Gannett and Clear Channel." Historian Richard White calls Berry "the environmental writer who has most thoughtfully tried to come to terms with labor" and "one of the few environmental writers who takes work seriously."

The concept of "Solving for pattern", coined by Berry in his essay of the same title, is the process of finding solutions that solve multiple problems, while minimizing the creation of new problems. The essay was originally published in the Rodale Press periodical The New Farm. Though Mr. Berry's use of the phrase was in direct reference to agriculture, it has since come to enjoy broader use throughout the design community.

Berry's core ideas, and in particular his poem "Sabbaths III (Santa Clara Valley)," guided the 2007 feature film Unforeseen, produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford. The film's director Laura Dunn stated, "We are of course most grateful to Mr. Berry for sharing his inspired work – his poem served as a guide post for me throughout this, at times meandering, project." Berry appears twice in the film narrating his own poem.

Poetry

Berry's lyric poetry often appears as a contemporary eclogue, pastoral, or elegy; but he also composes dramatic and historical narratives (such as "Bringer of Water" and "July, 1773", respectively) and occasional and discursive poems ("Against the War in Vietnam" and "Some Further Words", respectively).

Berry's first published poetry book consisted of a single poem, the elegiac November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three (1964), initiated and illustrated by Ben Shahn, commemorating the death of John F. Kennedy. It begins,

We know
The winter earth
Upon the body
Of the young
   President,
   And the early dark
   Falling;

and continues through ten more stanzas (each propelled by the anaphora of "We know"). The elegiac here and elsewhere, according to Triggs, enables Berry to characterize the connections "that link past and future generations through their common working of the land."

The first full-length collection, The Broken Ground (1964), develops many of Berry's fundamental concerns: "the cycle of life and death, responsiveness to place, pastoral subject matter, and recurring images of the Kentucky River and the hill farms of north-central Kentucky"

According to Angyal, "There is little modernist formalism or postmodernist experimentation in [Berry's] verse." A commitment to the reality and primacy of the actual world stands behind these two rejections. In "Notes: Unspecializing Poetry," Berry writes, "Devotion to order that is not poetical prevents the specialization of poetry." He goes on to note, "Nothing exists for its own sake, but for a harmony greater than itself which includes it. A work of art, which accepts this condition, and exists upon its terms, honors the Creation, and so becomes a part of it"

Lionel Basney placed Berry's poetry within a tradition of didactic poetry that stretches back to Horace: "To say that Berry's poetry can be didactic, then, means that it envisions a specific wisdom, and also the traditional sense of art and culture that gives art the task of teaching this wisdom"

For Berry, poetry exists "at the center of a complex reminding" Both the poet and the reader are reminded of the poem's crafted language, of the poem's formal literary antecedents, of "what is remembered or ought to be remembered," and of "the formal integrity of other works, creatures and structures of the world.".

Fiction

Berry's fiction to date consists of eight novels and forty-seven short stories (forty-three of which are collected in That Distant Land, 2004 and A Place in Time, 2012) which, when read as a whole, form a chronicle of the fictional small Kentucky town of Port William. Because of his long-term, ongoing exploration of the life of an imagined place, Berry has been compared to William Faulkner. Yet, although Port William is no stranger to murder, suicide, alcoholism, marital discord, and the full range of losses that touch human lives, it lacks the extremes of characterization and plot development that are found in much of Faulkner. Hence Berry is sometimes described as working in an idealized, pastoral, or nostalgic mode, a characterization of his work which he resists: "If your work includes a criticism of history, which mine certainly does, you can't be accused of wanting to go back to something, because you're saying that what we were wasn't good enough."

The effect of profound shifts in the agricultural practices of the United States, and the disappearance of traditional agrarian life, are some of the major concerns of the Port William fiction, though the theme is often only a background or subtext to the stories themselves. The Port William fiction attempts to portray, on a local scale, what "a human economy … conducted with reverence" looked like in the past—and what civic, domestic, and personal virtues might be evoked by such an economy were it pursued today. Social as well as seasonal changes mark the passage of time. The Port William stories allow Berry to explore the human dimensions of the decline of the family farm and farm community, under the influence of expanding post-World War II agribusiness. But these works rarely fall into simple didacticism, and are never merely tales of decline. Each is grounded in a realistic depiction of character and community. In A Place on Earth (1967), for example, farmer Mat Feltner comes to terms with the loss of his only son, Virgil. In the course of the novel, we see how not only Mat but the entire community wrestles with the acute costs of World War II.

Berry's fiction also allows him to explore the literal and metaphorical implications of marriage as that which binds individuals, families, and communities to each other and to Nature itself—yet not all of Port William is happily or conventionally married. "Old Jack" Beechum struggles with significant incompatibilities with his wife, and with a brief yet fulfilling extramarital affair. The barber Jayber Crow lives with a forlorn, secret, and unrequited love for a woman, believing himself "mentally" married to her even though she knows nothing about it. Burley Coulter never formalizes his bond with Kate Helen Branch, the mother of his son. Yet, each of these men find themselves firmly bound up in the community, the "membership," of Port William.

Of his fictional project, Berry has written: "I have made the imagined town of Port William, its neighborhood and membership, in an attempt to honor the actual place where I have lived. By means of the imagined place, over the last fifty years, I have learned to see my native landscape and neighborhood as a place unique in the world, a work of God, possessed of an inherent sanctity that mocks any human valuation that can be put upon it." Elsewhere, Berry has said, "The only thing I try to accomplish in fiction is to show how people act when they love each other." The novels and stories can be read in any order.

Nathan Coulter (1960)

In Berry's first novel, young Nathan "comes of age" through dealing with the death of his mother, the depression of his father Jared, the rugged companionship of his brother Tom, and the mischief of his uncle Burley. Kirkus Review concludes, "A sensitive adolescent theme is handled rather poetically, but so uniform in tone that no drama is generated and no sense of time passing is felt." John Ditsky finds William Faulkner's influence in Nathan Coulter, but notes, "Not only does the work avoid the pitfalls encountered by Faulkner's initial attempts to escape his postage stamp of native soil, but Nathan Coulter also seems a wise attempt to get that autobiographical first novel out of one's system, and to do so honesty."[sic]

A Place on Earth (1967/1983)

Set in the critical year of 1945, this novel focuses on farmer Mat Feltner's struggle over the news that his son Virgil has been listed as missing in action while also telling multiple tales of the lives of other Port William residents, such as Burley Coulter, Jack Beechum, Ernest Finley, Ida and Gideon Crop. Reprinting by North Point Press in 1983 allowed Berry to radically revise the novel, removing almost a third of its original length. Jeffrey Bilbro believes that these substantial changes marked growth in Berry's approach. "In Berry's revised edition, his technique caught up with his subject. He allows us, as readers, to participate in the ignorance of his characters, and in doing so, we may be able to understand more fully the painful difficulty of choosing fidelity to the natural order while living in the midst of mystery."

The Memory of Old Jack (1974)

This third novel of Port William begins with Jack Beechum as a very old man in 1952 and continues back into his youth and maturity to uncover his life and work as a dedicated farmer, conflicted husband, and living link to past generations. The story ranges from the Civil War to just past World War II. Josh Hurst comments on Berry's ability to avoid certain narrative pitfalls, "Jack's story could be presented us either as heroic ballad or as cautionary [tale]—and there is much in his life to support both admiration and gentle tisk-tisking—but the gift of this book is how it allows a man's memories to wash over us as though unshaped by narrative or conscious editorializing."

Remembering (1988)

In Berry's fourth novel, an adult Andy Catlett wanders through San Francisco remembering, but feeling alienated from, his native Port William. He struggles to come to terms with himself, his marriage, his farm, and the distorted values of American society. Of Berry's vision here, Charles Solomon writes, "Wendell Berry contrasts modern American agribusiness--which he depicts as an artificial conglomeration of sterile flow charts, debts and mechanization--with the older ideal of farming as a nurturing way of life." But along these lines, Bruce Bawer finds a problem with the novel, "Here, for the first time in a Port William novel, Berry seems more interested in communicating opinions than in portraying sympathetic characters in plausible situations; the opening episode, set at a conference on agricultural policy, paints the ideological conflict between Andy and his adversaries in broad, unsubtle strokes."

A World Lost (1996)

Young Andy Catlett's uncle Andrew had been murdered back in 1944, and now an adult Andy is reconstructing the event and its aftermath. "Looking back with a mixture of a young boy's incomprehension and an older man's nostalgia, Andy evokes the past not as a narrative but as a series of disembodied fragments in the flow of time." In this fifth novel of Port William, Berry considers the violence of men and its impact on the family and community that must come to terms with it. "Berry shows us the psychic costs of misplaced family pride and social rigidity, and yet he also celebrates the benevolent blessing of familial love. This is simple, soul-satisfying storytelling, augmented by understated humor and quiet insight."

Jayber Crow (2000)

Port William's barber recounts his life's journey in Berry's sixth novel. Jayber's early life as an orphan near Port William is followed by studies towards a possible vocation to Church ministry. A questioning mind, however, sends him in other directions until he finds himself back in Port William with an ever-growing commitment to that place and its people. As Publisher's Weekly notes, "Crow's life, which begins as WWI is about to erupt, is emblematic of a century of upheaval, and Berry's anecdotal and episodic tale sounds a challenge to contemporary notions of progress. It is to Berry's credit that a novel so freighted with ideas and ideology manages to project such warmth and luminosity."

Hannah Coulter (2004)

Berry's seventh novel presents a concise vision of Port William's "membership." The story encompasses Hannah's life, including the Great Depression, World War II, the postwar industrialization of agriculture, the flight of youth to urban employment, and the consequent remoteness of grandchildren. The tale is told in the voice of an old woman twice widowed, who has experienced much loss yet has never been defeated. Somehow, lying at the center of her strength is the "membership"—the fact that people care for each other and, even in absence, hold each other in a kind of presence. All in all, Hannah Coulter embodies many of the themes of Berry's Port William saga.

Andy Catlett: Early Travels (2006)

Andy Catlett, age nine, makes his first solo journey to visit with both sets of grandparents in Port William. The New York Times reviewer notes, "What the grown-up Andy recalls of that experience is transformed into 'a sort of homage' to a now-vanished world. Title characters from Berry's earlier Port William volumes — Jayber Crow, Old Jack, Hannah Coulter — appear here in affectionate cameos as the adult Andy, echoing Wordsworth, observes that 'in my memory, all who were there ... seem now to be gathered into a love that is at once a boy's and an aging man's.'"

Awards

Award	Year	Granting Institution	Notes
Wallace Stegner Fellowship	1958	Stanford University
Guggenheim Fellowship	1961	John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Rockefeller Fellowship	1965	The Rockefeller Foundation
Arts and Letters Award	1971	American Academy of Arts and Letters
Poets' Prize	2000	Nicholas Roerich Museum
Thomas Merton Award	1999	Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice
Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry	1994	The Sewanee Review and the University of the South
Art of Fact Award	2006	SUNY Brockport Writers Forum and M&T Bank
Kentuckian of the Year	2005	Kentucky Monthly
Premio Artusi	2008	La Città di Forlimpopoli
The Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement	2009	Fellowship of Southern Writers
The National Humanities Medal	2010	National Endowment for the Humanities
The 41st Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities	2012	National Endowment for the Humanities
The Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award	2012	Tulsa Library Trust
Russell Kirk Paideia Prize	2012	Circe Institute
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences	2013	American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Roosevelt Institute's Freedom Medal	2013	The Roosevelt Institute
The Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award	2013	Dayton Literary Peace Prize
The Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion	2013	American Academy of Religion
The Alan Tate Poetry Prize	2014	The Sewanee Review
The Dean's Cross for Servant Leadership in Church and Society	2014	Virginia Theological Seminary
Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame	2015	The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
The American Food and Farming Award	2015	The Center for Food Safety
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award	2016	National Book Critics Circle
The Sidney Lanier Prize	2016	Center for Southern Studies at Mercer University
IACP Trailblazer	2017	International Association of Culinary Professionals

Bibliography

Fiction

Title	Year	Publisher	Reprinted/Revised	ISBN	Notes
Nathan Coulter	1960	Houghton Mifflin, Boston	North Point (1985), Counterpoint (2008)	1582434093	Also in Three Short Novels, 2002 Heavily revised in 1985, including the removal of the last four chapters.
A Place on Earth	1967	Harcourt, Brace & World, New York	Avon (1969), North Point (1983), Counterpoint (2001)	1582431248	Heavily revised in 1983
The Memory of Old Jack	1974	Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, New York	Counterpoint (1999)	1582430438
The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership	1986	North Point, San Francisco		0865472165	Also in That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, 2004
Remembering	1988	North Point, San Francisco	Counterpoint (2008)	1582434158	Also in Three Short Novels, 2002
Fidelity: Five Stories	1992	Pantheon, New York		0679748318	Also in That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, 2004
Watch With Me and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch	1994	Pantheon, New York		0679758542	Also in That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, 2004
A World Lost	1996	Counterpoint, Washington, DC		1582434182	Also in Three Short Novels, 2002
Jayber Crow	2000	Counterpoint, Washington, DC		1582431604
Three Short Novels (Nathan Coulter, Remembering, A World Lost)	2002	Counterpoint, Washington, DC		1582431787
Hannah Coulter	2004	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, DC	Counterpoint, Berkeley (2007)	1593760361	In 2007 Shoemaker & Hoard became part of Counterpoint LLC, Berkeley, CA
That Distant Land: The Collected Stories	2004	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, DC	Counterpoint, Berkeley (2007)	159376054X	In 2007 Shoemaker & Hoard became part of Counterpoint LLC, Berkeley, CA
Andy Catlett: Early Travels	2006	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, DC	Counterpoint, Berkeley (2007)	1593761646	In 2007 Shoemaker & Hoard became part of Counterpoint LLC, Berkeley, CA
Whitefoot: A Story from the Center of the World	2009	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1582436401	Available online as "Whitefoot", Orion Magazine. January/February 2007
A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership	2012	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619021889

Uncollected short stories

• "Nothing Living Lives Alone". The Threepenny Review. Spring 2011. PEN/O. Henry Prize Story, 2012
• "The Branch Way of Doing". The Threepenny Review. Fall, 2014 Now included in Roots To The Earth, Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016.
• "Dismemberment". The Threepenny Review. Summer 2015.
• "One Nearly Perfect Day" Sewanee Review. Summer 2015.
• "How It Went" Sewanee Review. Summer 2016.

Nonfiction

Title	Year	Publisher	Reprinted/Revised	ISBN	Notes
The Long-Legged House	1969	Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; New York	Shoemaker & Hoard (2004), Counterpoint (2012)	69012028
The Hidden Wound	1970	Houghton Mifflin	Counterpoint (2010)	1582434867
The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge	1971	University Press of Kentucky; Lexington	North Point (1991), Shoemaker & Hoard (2006)	1593760922	Photographs by Ralph Eugene Meatyard
A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural & Agricultural	1972	Harcourt, Brace; New York	Shoemaker & Hoard (2004), Counterpoint (2012)	1593760922
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture	1977	Sierra Club, San Francisco	Avon Books (1978), Sierra Club/Counterpoint (third edition, 1996)	0871568772
The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural	1981	North Point, San Francisco	Counterpoint (2009)	1582434840
Recollected Essays: 1965–1980	1981	North Point, San Francisco		086547026X
Standing by Words	1983	North Point, San Francisco	Shoemaker & Hoard (2005), Counterpoint (2011)	1582437459
Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship	1986	North Point, San Francisco		086547172X	Editor with Wes Jackson and Bruce Colman
Home Economics: Fourteen Essays	1987	North Point, San Francisco	Counterpoint (2009)	1582434859
Descendants and Ancestors of Captain James W. Berry	1990	Hub, Bowling Green, KY			With Laura Berry
Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work	1990	University Press of Kentucky		0813109426
What Are People For?	1990	North Point, San Francisco	Counterpoint (2010)	1582434875
Standing on Earth: Selected Essays	1991	Golgonooza Press, UK		0903880466
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community	1992	Pantheon, New York		0679756515
Another Turn of the Crank	1996	Counterpoint, Washington, DC		1887178287
Grace: Photographs of Rural America	2000	Safe Harbor Books, New London, NH		0966579836	Photographs by Gregory Spaid, essay by Gene Logsdon, story by Wendell Berry
Life Is a Miracle	2000	Counterpoint, Washington, DC		1582431418
In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World	2001	Orion, Great Barrington, MA		0913098604
The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry	2002	Counterpoint, Washington, DC		1582431469
Citizens Dissent: Security, Morality, and Leadership in an Age of Terror	2003	Orion, Great Barrington, MA		0913098620	With David James Duncan. Foreword by Laurie Lane-Zucker
Citizenship Papers	2003	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, DC	Counterpoint (2014)	1619024470
Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy	2004	University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY		0813123275	Photographs by James Baker Hall
Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings about Love, Compassion & Forgiveness	2005	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, DC		1593761007
The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays	2005	Shoemaker & Hoard	Counterpoint (2006)	1593761198
Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food	2009	Counterpoint, Berkeley		158243543X
Imagination in Place	2010	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1582437068
What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth	2010	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1582436061
The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford	2011	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1582437149
It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays	2012	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619021145
Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder	2014	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619023059
Our Only World: Ten Essays	2015	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619024888

Uncollected essays

• "Against the Death Penalty" on YouTube "KCADP's YouTube Channel." April 24, 2009.
• "The Cost of Displacement"
• "To Break The Silence" Appalachian Heritage Vol 41 (3), Summer 2013, pp 78–84.

Poetry

Title	Year	Publisher	Reprinted/Revised	ISBN	Notes
The Broken Ground	1964	Harcourt Brace & World, New York
November twenty six nineteen hundred sixty three	1964	Braziller, New York			Art by Ben Shahn
Openings	1968	Harcourt Brace & World, New York		0156700123
Farming: A Hand Book	1970	Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York	Counterpoint, Berkeley (2011)	1582437637
The Country of Marriage	1973	Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York		1619021080
An Eastward Look	1974	Sand Dollar, Berkeley
Sayings and Doings	1974	Gnomon, Lexington, KY		0917788036
Clearing	1977	Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York		0151181500
A Part	1980	North Point, San Francisco		0865470081
The Wheel	1982	North Point, San Francisco		0865470782
The Collected Poems: 1957–1982	1985	North Point, San Francisco		0865471975
Sabbaths: Poems	1987	North Point, San Francisco		0865472904
Traveling at Home	1988	The Press of Appletree Alley, Lewisburg PA	North Point (1989)	1582437645
Entries	1994	Pantheon, New York	Counterpoint, Washington DC (1997)	1887178376
The Farm	1995	Larkspur, Monterey KY			Illustrations by Carolyn Whitesel
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997	1998	Counterpoint, Washington DC		1582430063	Later included in This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry	1999	Counterpoint, Washington DC		1582430373
The Gift of Gravity, Selected Poems, 1968–2000	2002	Golgonooza Press, UK
Sabbaths 2002	2004	Larkspur, Monterey KY			Later included in This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013
Given: New Poems	2005	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington DC		1593760612	Partially included in This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013
Window Poems	2007	Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington DC		1582436231	Originally published in Openings (1968)
The Mad Farmer Poems	2008	Counterpoint, Berkeley		161902277X	Originally published in Farming: A Handbook, The Country of Marriage, A Part, and Entries
Sabbaths 2006	2008	Larkspur, Monterey KY			Later included in This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013
Leavings	2010	Counterpoint, Berkeley		158243624X	Partially included in This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013
Sabbaths 2009	2011	Sewanee Review, Spring 2011			Later included in This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013
New Collected Poems	2012	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1582438153
This Day: Sabbath Poems Collected and New 1979–2013	2013	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619021986
Terrapin and Other Poems	2014	Counterpoint, Berkeley		161902425X	Illustrated by Tom Pohrt
Sabbaths 2013	2015	Larkspur, Monterey, KY			Wood engravings by Wesley Bates
A Small Porch	2016	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619026162	Sabbath Poems 2014 and 2015 together with "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation"
Roots To The Earth	2016	Counterpoint, Berkeley		1619027800	Eight previously published poems and one uncollected short story, accompanied by wood engravings by Wesley Bates. This is the trade edition (with the added short story and engravings) of the 2014 Larkspur Press edition, based on the 1995 West Meadow Press portfolio.

Interviews

• Beattie, L. Elisabeth (Editor). "Wendell Berry" in Conversations With Kentucky Writers, University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
• Berger, Rose Marie. "Wendell Berry interview complete text," Sojourner's Magazine, July 2004
• Fisher-Smith, Jordan. "Field Observations: An Interview with Wendell Berry'"
• Grubbs, Morris Allen (Editor). Conversations with Wendell Berry, University Press of Mississippi, 2007. ISBN 1578069920
• hooks, bell. "Healing Talk: A Conversation" in "Belonging: A Culture of Place", 2009, Routledge.
• Lehrer, Brian. The Brian Lehrer Show WYNC, October 17, 2013
• Leonard, Sarah. "Nature as an Ally" Dissent, Vol. 59, No. 2, Spring, 2012
• Minick, Jim. "A Citizen and a Native: An Interview with Wendell Berry" Appalachian Journal, Vol. 31, Nos 3–4, (Spring-Summer, 2004)
• Weinreb, Mindy. "A Question a Day: A Written Conversation with Wendell Berry" in Merchant
• Brockman, Holly. "How can a family 'live at the center of its own attention?' Wendell Berry's thoughts on the good life", January/February 2006
• Smith, Peter. "Wendell Berry's still unsettled in his ways." The Courier-Journal, September 30, 2007, A1.
• "Wendell Berry: A conversation," The Diane Rehm Show. WAMU 88.5 American University Radio, November 30, 2009.
• "Wendell Berry: Poet & Prophet," Moyers & Company. PBS. October 4, 2013.
• "Wendell Berry, Burkean" Interview with Gracy Olmstead. The American Conservative, February 17, 2015.

Forewords, introductions, prefaces, and afterwords

Title	Author	Year	Publisher	ISBN
Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work	Meine, Curt D.	2010	University of Wisconsin Press	9780299249045
Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place	Baker, Jack R. and Jeffrey Bilbro	2017	University Press of Kentucky	978081316902
The Caudills of the Cumberlands: Anne's Story of Life with Harry	Cummins, Terry	2013	Butler Books	9781935497684
Driftwood Valley: A Woman Naturalist in the Northern Wilderness	Stanwell-Fletcher, Theodora C.	1999	Oregon State University Press	9780870715242
Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation	Nabhan, Gary Paul	2002	University of Arizona Press	9780816522590
God and Work: Aspects of Art and Tradition	Keeble, Brian	2009	World Wisdom Books	9781933316680
Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal	Kline, David	2001	The Wooster Book Company	9781888683226
The Holy Earth	Bailey, Liberty Hyde	2015	Counterpoint	9781619025875
Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World	Keogh, Martin (ed.)	2010	North Atlantic Books	9781556439193
James Archambeault's Historic Kentucky	Archambeault, James	2006	University Press of Kentucky	9780813124209
Kentucky's Natural Heritage: An Illustrated Guide to Biodiversity	Abernathy, Greg (ed.)	2010	University Press of Kentucky	9780813125756
Letter to a Young Farmer: How to Live Richly without Wealth on the New Garden Farm	Logsdon, Gene	2017	Chelsea Green Pub.	9781603587259
Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight	Wirzba, Norman	2006	Brazos Press	9781587431654
Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness	Reece, Erik	2006	Riverbed	9781594482366
The Man Who Created Paradise	Logsdon, Gene	2001	Ohio University Press	9780821414071
The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply	Midriff, Ken	2005	St. Martin's Griffin	9780312325367
Missing Mountains	Johansen, Kristin (ed.)	2005	Wind Publications	9781893239494
My Mercy Encompasses All: The Koran's Teachings on Compassion, Peace and Love	Shah-Kazemi, Reza	2007	Counterpoint	9781593761448
Nature as Measure: The Selected Essays of Wes Jackson	Jackson, Wes	2011	Counterpoint	9781582437002
The One-Straw Revolution	Fukuoka, Masanobu	2009	NYRB Classics	9781590173138
The Pattern of a Man & Other Stories	Still, James	2001	Gnomon Press	9780917788758
Pedestrian Photographs	Merrill, Larry	2008	University of Rochester Press	9781580462907
The Prince's Speech: On the Future of Food	HRH The Prince of Wales	2012	Rodale Press	9781609614713
Ralph Eugene Meatyard	Gassan, Arnold	1970	Gnomon Press	ASIN: B001GECZNY
Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible	Davis, Ellen F.	2008	Cambridge University Press	9780521732239
Soil And Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture	Howard, Albert	2007	University Press of Kentucky	9780813191713
Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries	Cook, Mariana	2011	Damiani	9788862081696
The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of the Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future	Reece, Erik and James J. Krupka	2013	University of Georgia Press	9780820341231
The Toilet Papers: Recycling Waste and Conserving Water	Van der Ryn, Sim	1978	Ecological Design Press	9781890132583
To a Young Writer	Stegner, Wallace	2009	Red Butte Press	9780874809985
Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture	Smith, J. Russell	1987	Island Press	9780933280441
Waste Land: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape	Hanson, David T.	1997	Aperture	9780893817268
We All Live Downstream: Writings About Mountaintop Removal	Howard, Jason	2009	MotesBooks	9781934894071
The Woodcuts of Harlan Hubbard	Hubbard, Harlan	1994	University Press of Kentucky	9780813118796

See also

• Agrarianism
• Fellowship of Southern Writers
• The Land Institute
• Local food
• Localism (politics)
• Southern Agrarians
• Sustainability
• Subsidiarity
• Wallace Stegner
• Wes Jackson

Further reading

• Angyal, Andrew. Wendell Berry. New York: Twayne, 1995.
• Bilbro, Jeffrey. "The Way of Love: Berry's Vision of Work in the Kingdom of God," in Loving God's Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015. 138-178.
• Bonzo, J. Matthew and Michael R. Stevens. Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008.
• Goodrich, Janet. The Unforeseen Self in the Works of Wendell Berry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
• Merchant, Paul, ed. Wendell Berry (American Authors Series). Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence, 1991.
• Mitchell, Mark and Nathan Schlueter. The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011.
• Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011.
• Peters, Jason, ed. Wendell Berry: Life and Work. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007.
• Shuman, Joel James and Owens, L. Roger (eds). Wendell Berry and Religion: Heaven's Earthly Life. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009.
• Smith, Kimberly K. Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
• Sutterfield, Ragan. Wendell Berry and the Given Life. Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2017.
• Wiebe, Joseph R. The Place of Imagination: Wendell Berry and the Poetics of Community, Affection, and Identity. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017

External links

• Official website
• Internet Resources