Leavings: Poems [Hardcover]

Wendell Berry's earlier books of poetry often carried titles that seemed to open up with a measure of hope toward the future: like Openings: Poems (Harvest/Hbj Book) and Entries, Findings and Clearing, and Given: Poems. But with Leavings: Poems Berry seems closer to sunset than sunrise. Hope, where it may be found, is hard won. Leavings is not the title of any one of the poems, but seems to sum up the book, as if Berry were deliberately taking leave of his readers. "It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old." (2007.VI) "In time a man disappears..." (2007.VII) "I know I am getting old and I say so,..." (2005.VII) There are other leavings here too, other than the merely personal, predominantly that of the descending water that flows out from a lowly stream named Camp Branch. Falling tones, falling leaves (literally), falling steps, falling stones, falling snow and falling rain transport the reader to the Kentucky countryside where we see the place that has meant and still means the world to Mr. Berry. This small collection takes the reader on a painful but beautiful journey, a shared pilgrimage down familiar paths measured in ever slower and more halting steps, made all the more valuable for the fact that the reader is not required to leave his native place to join Mr. Berry except in imagination. "So many times I've gone away from here, where I'd rather be than any place I know.... It is death." (2008.X)
The book is in two parts: the first part is a potpourri, an all-too-short assortment of letter poems, occasional pieces, and brief reflections (the 20 titled poems in the collection are here); the second part is entitled "Sabbaths 2005-2008" and carries the tag line, "How may a human being come to rest?" (54 numbered poems make up this section.)
One of my favorite poems in this collection, one I know I'll return to many times, occurs early in Part I and is entitled simply "An Embarrassment." The severe economy of language--3 or 4 word lines mostly, mostly 1 or 2 syllable words--conveys the embarrassment of friends who regularly offer thanks for a meal when they eat alone but who are now trying to decide whether to do so when they are together. One of them, having decided to make a go of the prayer, leaves (!) them both embarrassed as the prayer falls awfully flat. I'll not ruin the ending for you, but it is a Berry-esque show stopper. For someone who makes his living as a pastor, that one poem was worth the price of admission. But there are many others from this book that will now join my ever growing list of Berry favorites: e.g., "A Speech to the Garden Club of America," which admonishes us to go "back to school, this time in gardens." Or "While Attending the Annual Convocation of Cause Theorists and Bigbangists at the Local Provincial Research University, the Mad Farmer Intercedes from the Back Row." (If you've read the other Mad Farmer Poems, you'll appreciate the appropriateness of this addition to the corpus.)
I have been reading (and re-reading) Wendell Berry's work for quite a while now. That means I've heard many of the words and seen many of the ideas before. But these poems are new, encountered for the first time like today's bracing walk in a familiar woods I've visited many times. The woods and the friends with whom we walk, like the day itself, are the same as they've always been but also different on this day. In that sense these poems are very gratefully received; it is, after all, November and there are too few such walks left to me ...and to you.
Do yourself a favor. Get the book and spend time with it out of doors while the leaves are still falling, or indoors by the fire in the depths of winter.

I've pretty much ignored poetry, with a very few exceptions, for decades now, but thanks to a small bookstore with idiosyncratic shelving, I happened across this book. Berry's essays had been recommended to me more than once, but I'd never got around to reading them, and (shame on me) I didn't even know he was a poet. Anyway, out of curiosity I picked up this book and was immediately enthralled. It was everything I had missed in the little poetry I've encountered the past 30 years: authentic, spare, direct, unpretentious (lots of one-syllable words), musical, thought-provoking, beautifully crafted yet with that magical feeling of being absolutely unforced and natural (and yet inevitable) that comes only with true craft and talent. I could go on. This was the real thing, and it reminded me why once upon a time I actually enjoyed (some) poetry. This is a true marriage of art and deep living and wisdom, and if you care anything about words (or the Earth), you owe it to yourself to experience it.

Wendell Berry is mad, he has had enough of how things are going. He is not only writing about it, he protested with Bill McKibben and James Hansen at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C. re climate change.

Questionnaire
1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

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