Wendell Berry - Poet and Prophet on His Hopes For Humanity

Wendell Berry, 79, is a shy poet, Kentucky farmer, and author of 40 books.  He is also an outspoken advocate and activist for a radical change in our treatment of the earth and ways to promote sustainable agriculture.

“We don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not,” he says.  ”The only question we have a right to ask is what’s the right thing to do? 

What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?”

In a rare TV interview with Bill Moyers released on October 4, this gentle poet, spoke of recent demonstrations against mountain top strip mining, which poisoned Kentucky rivers, Berry said,  “This is intolerable. There’s no excuse for it…there’s no justification for the permanent destruction of the world.”

When asked about his Christian faith, Berry said, " I still consider myself a person who takes the gospels very seriously. And I read in them and am sometimes shamed by them and sometimes utterly baffled by them. But there is a good bit of the gospel that I do get, I think. I believe I understand it accurately. And I’m sticking to that.  And I’m hanging on for the parts that I don’t understand. And, you know
willing to endure the shame of falling short as a price of admission.  All that places a very heavy and exacting obligation on me as a writer. A  lot of my writing I think has been, when it hasn’t been in defense of  precious things, has been a giving of thanks for precious things. So  that enforces the art." 

Click here for a book review of his title Religion, Heaven's Earthly Life.


On his writing- from here.

“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

"I still consider myself a person who takes the gospels very seriously. And I read in them and am sometimes shamed by them and sometimes utterly baffled by them. But there is a good bit of the gospel that I do get, I think. I believe I understand it accurately. And I’m sticking to that. And I’m hanging on for the parts that I don’t understand. And, you know willing to endure the shame of falling short as a price of admission. All that places a very heavy and exacting obligation on me as a writer. A lot of my writing I think has been, when it hasn’t been in defense of precious things, has been a giving of thanks for precious things. So that enforces the art."


You can read the transcript here:  Wendell Berry on his hopes for humanity

I've also dug out this post from my archives : We Forget The Greater And Still Continuing Miracle.

You can read more on his poetry here from The Poetry Foundation

 and here is a separate video extract from the interview reading his poem Hope

HOPE

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
For hope must not depend on feeling good
And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself.
Because we have not made our lives to fit
Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. 

Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
Of what it is that no other place is, and by
Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.

Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place
Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.

Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio. Speak
Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
By which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.

Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

Related articles

• Mad Consumers vs. One Mad Farmer: Goodwill Shopping and Wendell Berry (awaywithwordsblog.com)
• Blog Watch: Wendell Berry and Place (brtom.typepad.com)
• Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity (thefirstgates.com)
• Wendell Berry's Humanism  
• Awards and Honours  - Jefferson Lecture