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.