Wendell Berry Summary

Wendell Berry lives with his wife and two children on a hillside farm on the Kentucky River near Port Royal, Kentucky. In his writing he has particularized his land and his home as fully as Jesse Stua... Read more

A distinguished essayist and accomplished poet, Wendell Berry has also established himself as an important novelist and short-story writer. Since the publication of his first novel, Nathan Coulter (19... Read more

Critical Essay by Roberts W. French They attached me to the earth. It is the experience of such attachment that Wendell Berry writes about in Farming: A Handbook. Indeed, the book has little to say ab... Read more

Critical Essay by Peter Dollard Berry's direct and easily understood verse [in A Part] is worlds removed from the self-indulgent and often contrived obscurity so common in contemporary poetry. ... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles Hudson Like E. B. White and Noel Perrin, Wendell Berry writes in the country, and he writes mainly about country life, but he owes nothing to either of these writers. His spi... Read more

Critical Essay by Publishers Weekly The color and shadings of the work of poets come out of the life they choose to support their art, financially and spiritually. There are city poets and country poe... Read more

Critical Essay by Patrick Callahan The Hidden Wound is an autobiographical meditation which also serves as an apologia. Berry attempts to justify his recent retreat to a Kentucky farm, where, having f... Read more

Critical Essay by D. E. Richardson Sayings & Doings is for the most part an anthology of short epigrams heard in conversation in the country. In a short prefatory note Berry likens these poems to ... Read more

Critical Essay by David Ignatow No one could deny the nobility of Wendell Berry's dream of the sanctity of the soil. I will not comment on his techniques in Clearing,… they are all that ... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael Hamburger Clearing includes history quite as specific, localized and personal, yet runs no comparable risk. All his work in verse and prose is sustained by a pervasive vision... Read more

In the following essay, Hiers asserts that Berry “both inherits and creates an agrarian ethos which sustains poetic visions of love unique among contemporary poets” and compares his poet... Read more

In the following essay, Gamble explores the relationship between wilderness and agriculture in Berry's poetry. Wendell Berry envisions a moral agriculture that transforms the farmer from the en... Read more

In the following essay, Whited views Berry's work as a repudiation of consumer culture in favor of an appreciation and understanding of a value system based on spiritual, communal, and familial... Read more