Thanks as always for this, Devin. I am so familiar with so much of Berry, but almost none of your excerpts! So this is a great gift. Am especially connecting with the lines about rivers and dams. There's such a blocky, bull-headed feeling to the words/syllables themselves, especially the last line: "They will become little pieces." No flashy dam explosions or lyric river victories here. Just ordinary little words, very nearly passive voice. The inexorability of it.
I am reading Sand Talk by the Aboriginal author Tyson Yunkaporta, and I wonder if you know it. Each chapter reads like a prose poem, winding in and through itself, laying down many layers. The theme of the whole is what it takes to perceive the patterns of nature and then especially what it takes to arrange human social relations to match those patterns.
Having read Sand Talk several times, I will read it again. A wonderful book with gravity and levity. And I especially enjoyed the drawings of the various symbols.
"Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence."
Having just finished watching "A Hidden Life," that quote from Wendell Berry is timely and moving. So much of "A Hidden Life" took place on a farm with people who experienced the sacred in each other, in their family, in their home in the mountains, and in grief and hope.
And there was the quote after the movie ended:
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch.
I too love Wendell Berry’s work. Thank you for writing about him. But I’m afraid your connection to the current war left a sour taste for its one-sidedness. Moral clarity requires a wider view, in my opinion.
Thanks as always for this, Devin. I am so familiar with so much of Berry, but almost none of your excerpts! So this is a great gift. Am especially connecting with the lines about rivers and dams. There's such a blocky, bull-headed feeling to the words/syllables themselves, especially the last line: "They will become little pieces." No flashy dam explosions or lyric river victories here. Just ordinary little words, very nearly passive voice. The inexorability of it.
I am reading Sand Talk by the Aboriginal author Tyson Yunkaporta, and I wonder if you know it. Each chapter reads like a prose poem, winding in and through itself, laying down many layers. The theme of the whole is what it takes to perceive the patterns of nature and then especially what it takes to arrange human social relations to match those patterns.
I do not know Sand Talk! Adding it to my list of things to read. Appreciate your words. Thanks so much for reading and reaching out.
Having read Sand Talk several times, I will read it again. A wonderful book with gravity and levity. And I especially enjoyed the drawings of the various symbols.
Me too, Amanda! They stir the pot, don't they—the pot of imagining, reflecting. They're so simple and so rich.
"Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence."
Having just finished watching "A Hidden Life," that quote from Wendell Berry is timely and moving. So much of "A Hidden Life" took place on a farm with people who experienced the sacred in each other, in their family, in their home in the mountains, and in grief and hope.
And there was the quote after the movie ended:
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch.
What a movie, right? I love being reminded of George Eliot's insight, as well. Thanks for this.
Devin, I am grateful for your Ordinary Plots, your meditations on poems. Thank you for putting in the time and heart to send it out into the world.
Liza
thank you, Liza!
♥️🐚
I too love Wendell Berry’s work. Thank you for writing about him. But I’m afraid your connection to the current war left a sour taste for its one-sidedness. Moral clarity requires a wider view, in my opinion.
Appreciate you reading despite the disagreement. Thank you.
thank you for all of this, Tim -- for reading, and for sharing these Berry words, and for offering your own thoughts. appreciate you.