Gain Access This Day: New And Collected Sabbath Poems 19792012 Designed By Wendell Berry In Digital Copy

little more than a decade ago I read A Timbered Choir, Berry's first collection of Sabbath Poems, They didn't stick with my quite as well as the poems in his earlier Collected Poems did, but I still gathered some favourites from them,

This is an updated collection of Sabbath poems that includes all of A Timbered Choir and more Sabbath poems written since then, up through, Noticeable in this volume are Berry's reactions to the Iraq War years,

Berry's more recent poems continue his normal themescare of the land, reflecting on marriage, criticizing our culture's faults, Added to that are ruminations on aging, I don't think that the more recent poems are as creatively powerful as the earlier ones, but they are interesting insights on life from one of our wisest people.
For nearly thirtyfive years, Wendell Berry has been at work on a series of poems occasioned by his solitary Sunday walks around his farm in Kentucky, From riverfront and meadows, to grass fields and woodlots, every inch of this hillside farm lives in these poems, as do the poets constant companions in memory and occasion, family and animals, who have with Berry created his Home Place with love and gratitude.


There are poems of spiritual longing and political extremity, memorials and celebrations, elegies and lyrics that include some of the most beautiful domestic poems in American literature, alongside the occasional rants of the Mad Farmer, pushed to the edge yet again by his compatriots and elected officials.


With the publication of this new complete edition, it is becoming increasingly clear that The Sabbath Poems have become the very heart of Berrys entire work.
And these magnificent poems, taken as a whole, have become one of the greatest contributions ever made to American poetry,
Wendell Berry might have been described by Thoreau as a 'SainteTerrer', a HolyLander forever on pilgrimage towards his spiritual home,
Berry's collection of Sabbath poems were written over a lifetime of Sundays while roaming the fields and backwoods of his native Kentucky contemplating themes of nature, community, economics, simplicity, love, life, death and the after life.

Berry is one of the prophetic voices of this generation, a voice calling in the wilderness, "Prepare the way for the Lord, "

You can almost smell the earth and hear the bird song, Honest. Tender. Observant. Measured. Connected. Wendell Berry is so full of love and respect for God's creation and his own small place in it, It is mildly rrdiculous for a reader to give "stars" for a rating to a book of poems as wonderful as this one, But I do, hoping others will follow the to the poet and learn from him, as I have, I can't sit down and consume a lot of these at one time, But every time I open this book there are treasures galore,years of Sabbath reflections. Whether he called it that or not, Berry is no stranger to the rhythms of rest, Marvelous insight set to poetry, Excellent material for weekly, monthly, or annual readings, Ive spent every morning with this book over the pastmonths, Its become an incredibly special and important book to me, These poems were breath. Theyve slowed me down. Theyve helped me rest. Theyve carried me into healing spaces in my own writing, Ill be coming back to these always, This book will be one Ill be holding onto for the long haul This collection of poems was stellar, I read a poem a day for quite some time and I'm so grateful for Wendell Berry and his artful way of voicing his thoughts, His care toward the world and environment are so obvious and I appreciate his love of simplicity and the beauty that can be found in it, I will miss starting every day with one of his poems from this beautiful collection and would recommend this book to any and all readers, As poetry, I enjoyed this collection, but unevenly, But as a voice we need to hear, I'm grateful, In an age of the commodification of all things, Berry is grounded in the sacred particularity of the land, the marriage, and the faith one loves, In an age of violence, Berry gives voice to the futility and carnage of war, In an age of constant work, Berry wrote these hundreds of poems on sabbath days days of rest and slow walks in fields and woods kept weekly over twentyfive years.
And in an age of the idolatry of youth and the fear and denial of death, Berry wrote these poems in the last third of his life change, loss, and death are regularly present, in the voice of one who has made his peace with mortality.


This is the newest edition of Wendell Berry's poems inspired by his solitary Sunday walks around his Kentucky farm, written fromto, Inspirational, filled with spiritual longing, politcs, wonderings at the natural, and human, world, . . happy, sad, beautiul poems here, Wonderful! Loved slowly reading this mammothsized poetry collection over the last six months! Now I feel like I can finally dive into Berry's other works, because you know I've been stockpiling his books when I find them as soon as I heard what he's about.
. my man!! Thanks to Goodreads, I know Ive spent nearlymonths with these poems, and they truly ushered in so much Sabbath in that time,

I realize not every poem in the collection is astar one, but I giveto this incredible tribute to the growth of a man, a mind, a voice, a message.
I think the crowning achievement is toward the end“The Book of Camp Branch” which I would like to memorize, and which I suspect is a sister poem to Berrys book of essays Standing By Words coming up this year in my apprenticeship!.
Wendell Berry writes in his introduction that "the fundamental conflict of our time is that between the creaturely life of Natures world and the increasingly mechanical life of modern humans.
" Many of the poems in this collection explore this conflict, with the mechanical life of modern humans coming in for some harsh criticism, Berry also writes "that one is sometimes able, among the disturbances of the present world, to wander into some good and beautiful whereabouts of the woods, grow quiet, and come to rest is a gift, a wonder, and a kind of grace.
" Although a Christian many of the poems in this collection are specifically so, this idea of the good and beautiful whereabouts of the woods constitute a Sabbath for Berry, one separate from the Sabbath where "On Sunday mornings I often attend a church in which I sometimes sat with my grandfather, in which I sometimes sit with my grandchildren, and in which my wife plays the piano.
But I am a badweather churchgoer, " Sabbath, in Berry's poetry, is to experience the nature Sabbath is also community, love between husband and wife, family, and peace on earth, all explored in this collection of poems as well.


In this time of Trump and pandemic, and climate change, Berry is a hard read, because he constantly reminds us through his poems that we can all be doing more and should be doing more to make this world more peaceful, and protect the earth, to be good stewards.
We aren't being good stewards we worship machinery and money rather than appreciating and preserving precious Creation,
If you're going to have a book of Wendell Berry poems, this is it,

And Lord have mercy, is it worth having, Berry's writing is earthy and grounded, spiritfilled and elegiac, radiant with an honest, dirtunderthefingernails love of creation, The poems themselves are almost entirely wonderful, Some are personal, more are economic, several are political, Most are songs to life and field and forest, a that hard, slower, more rooted sense of being human that we now have mostly forgotten,

A few are so filled with glory, . . like the poem A Timbered Choir, . . that the hairs on my arm stand on end and I tremble a little in the reading, as one does when one is growing dangerously close to the Holy.


I love this book, Starting reading this on the subway reading the introduction that said that the book is best read in a quiet place in nature, I guess the subway is the secondbest place to read this book, I have had the book out in my living room, and friends who have seen it have said they want to read it, Hard to decide where to start in reading Wendell Berry he has written so much! Wendell Berry began writing Sabbath poems in, and the series continues today, in.
I return to this volume whenever I need to hear a sane, savoring voice reflecting on life, on Earth, and on perennial human questions about meaning, mortality, holiness, beauty, and love.
This man of lettersmaster of fiction and essay as well as poetrycan be irreverent in his other writing, as in his Mad Farmer poems, but in these pages he is in a reflective mood, aware of the holy presence shimmering around him on his hillside farm, along the banks of the Kentucky River, among his sheep and gardens, in the country of marriage he shares with his beloved Tanya.
To sample the full range of his poetry, read his New Collected Poems Counterpoint Press,, He is one of my touchstones, as writer and human being, A dense and beautiful collection of poems that perfectly encapsulate all the things that make Wendell Berry such an approachable and timeless poet, He repeats themes a lot, but never presents them in a way that feels redundant, He lets his passions and frustrations and fears shine, and reading his workespecially out loudis a meditative and almost healing, You cant help but hear the sounds of nature while reading Berrys work,

Berry might not be the most profound or technically stunning of poetsalthough Id never admit to being able to define what those traits should even look likebut he is a master of voice and tone and lures his reader in with an air of simplicity and then traps them with his layered and complex thematics.
There were countless times throughout this collection where a poem would gently take me by the hand, walk me through its beautiful language, and

then sucker punch me with a final, decisive line or stanza that left me reeling.
Thats the beauty of Berrys poetry,

I cant recommend this book enough, Better than the Bible Peaceful, reflective, simple, . . all like a good Sunday in Kentucky, Berry's sabbaths make you feel as you traversed his plains, hiked in his woods, marveled at nature's dance before his eyes, all wrapped in a reverence of the creator and the occasional disdain for the created who don't share in his gratefulness of the gift of it all.
His writing grows more fluid as the years traipse by and the introspection remains consistent, The imagery at times seems so tangible that the reader transports easily to the bluegrass venues that Berry celebrates with, marvels at, and speaks to,
My favorite collection was, It was very hard to pick a favorite poem from this beautiful book, I chooseto add, this was a perfect book to read with everything that is going on in the world right now,

What do the tall trees say
To the late havocs in the sky
They sigh,
The air moves, and they sway,
When the breeze on the hill
Is still, they they stand still,
They wait.
They have no fear, Their fate
Is faith, Birdsong
Is all they've wanted, all along,

Off in the woods in the quiet
morning a redbird is singing
and his song goes out around him
greater than its purpose,
a welcoming room of song
in which the trees stand,
through which the creek flows.


p.
I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love,

I have no love
except it come from Thee,

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind, .