Contemplative essays Wendell Berry’s gentle farewell?

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | March 26, 2010

I won't claim to be an objective reviewer of Wendell Berry. I get a bit giddy every time he publishes a new book, and I'm always conscious that this could be his last.

Berry has spent his life farming the handful of acres where he grew up, and writing essays, poetry and novels that describe and defend the things he loves. His newest book, Imagination in Place, is his fiftieth (yes, that's 50th, not 15th), and it deals with familiar themes: agriculture, community, food, neighbourliness and a fierce defense of these small and fragile gifts against the dehumanizing forces of greedy corporations and power-hungry politicians.

But he comes at these things tangentially this time, because this book is mostly about writers and writing. He shares his love of poetry and literature and offers essays of gratitude to various men and women for their writing, their character and their lives.

I'm sure this book is, in part, Berry working on an early round of "goodbyes;" he turns 76 this year. Berry offers moving tributes to fellow writers Wallace Stegner, Jane Kenyon, James Still and Hayden Carruth, among others. The chapter, "The Uses of Adversity," is a detailed discussion of Shakespeare's As You Like It and King Lear, both of which Berry considers timeless tales of social disintegration under leaders who are fundamentally corrupted by the love of power. Even when he's talking literature, Berry clearly has contemporary political and economic realities in mind.

His tributes to different writers show that Berry's sense of community extends to the writers that he admires and respects. It's not the first time Berry has written about his literary peers. Years ago I discovered Edward Abbey, thanks to Wendell Berry. But for a writer as accomplished as Berry, it's a testimony to his own character that at this late stage in his life he would devote so much of a book to praising the work and lives of others.

Readers hoping for the usual Berry rants about corporate corruption or governmental ineptitude won't find much of that here; there's plenty of that elsewhere in his other books. This is a gentler, more contemplative book. It's like sitting with him at the end of the day, listening to him tell stories about the poets and writers he's known, the influence they've had on him and the friendship they've shared.