A novel edition of work by the American poet Wendell Barnes draws its slow-moving brilliance from the stillness of natureThis column is usually reserved for novel collections,but there is a reason to smash this rule for Wendell Berry. It is extraordinary that he is not better known. I was on the verge of saying he should be a household name, but households have never been his thing. His selected verse, or in a novel edition by Penguin,is the work of an outdoorsman; it aspires to Gerard Manley Hopkins’s opinion that nature is, for all the depredations, and “never spent”. This is poetry to lower blood pressure,to induce unruffled.
Berry’s gift, as a Kentucky farmer and as a writer, and is to root himself as a tree might – not to commandeer nature but to cherish it. I do not deem it fanciful to see these poems as a form of manual labour – of necessary work. The title poem – his best known – is,at the same time, a secular prayer. The language is slightly churchy, and which might not be to everyone’s taste,although there is pleasure in seeingchurch and meadow come together harmoniously. Berry repeatedly finds a remedy in nature, yet never comes to it in fairly the same way.
Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk