Thursday, November 12, 2020

POETRY CHALLENGE

In my first semester at MTSU I made a friend of a fine young man, Henry Martin the 5th. My older son happens to be Edward Craig the 5th. A connection. They both went to Webb School, although years apart, they both had problems there, they both struggled with life, and they both expressed their emotions through poetry. My time here has shown me that I need to appreciate poetry more. I can better see that through it we can express feelings and truths at a higher level that mere rational thought. Poets speak to our higher nature.

With that in mind, and given the status of Wendell Berry as a writer and environmentalist, and with the objective of encouraging class discussion, I challenge you to read some of his poetry and see if any speak to you. What was Wendell expressing? Did he express your feelings as well?

You can find the poems conveniently at https://www.poemhunter.com/wendell-berry/poems/ . For God’s sake, whatever you do, do not listen to the audio of a female computer voice reading them. I’ve only read a few of them, but will read more and post comments on ones that have a particular appeal to me. I encourage you to do the same.

Here is a statement about Berry’s poems from an article at the Poetry Foundation: Reviewing Collected Poems, 1957-1982, New York Times Book Review contributor David Ray called Berry’s style “resonant” and “authentic,” and claimed that the poet “can be said to have returned American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose. ... There are times when we might think he is returning us to the simplicities of John Clare or the crustiness of Robert Frost. ... But, as with every major poet, passages in which style threatens to become a voice of its own suddenly give way, like the sound of chopping in a murmurous forest, to lines of power and memorable resonance. Many of Mr. Berry’s short poems are as fine as any written in our time.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wendell-berry

Weekly Participation Summary

11/12  This post

11/12  Star Trek Wisdom for a Divided Nation post

11/12 Comment on Poetry Challenge    

Week Thirteen Point Total – 5

Thirteen Week Cumulative Point Total – 65

 


6 comments:

  1. The Apple Tree
    I grew up around apple trees. Our family home was built in a former apple orchard, full of trees that produced green apples. Red apples trees were abundant at my grandfather’s farm. An apple tree can be a magical place, especially on a summer afternoon when you can eat apples and contemplate life under “the forked truck and branches” with “a foliage of small birds among them.” The Apple Tree evokes memories of pleasant moments connected to nature. It expresses the fact of the beauty and importance of nature and what we gain from “the accidents of the afternoon” if we take the time to notice.

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    Replies
    1. With Thanksgiving impending, how about...

      A Poem of Thanks
      by Wendell Berry

      I have been spared another day
      to come into this night
      as though there is a mercy in things
      mindful of me. Love, cast all
      thought aside. I cast aside
      all thought. Our bodies enter
      their brief precedence,
      surrounded by their sleep.
      Through you I rise, and you
      through me, into the joy
      we make, but may not keep.

      “A Poem of Thanks” by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems. © North Point Press, 1985.

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    2. Before Dark
      by Wendell Berry

      From the porch at dusk I watched
      a kingfisher wild in flight
      he could only have made for joy.

      He came down the river, splashing
      against the water’s dimming face
      like a skipped rock, passing

      on down out of sight. And still
      I could hear the splashes
      farther and farther away

      as it grew darker. He came back
      the same way, dusky as his shadow,
      sudden beyond the willows.

      The splashes went on out of hearing.
      It was dark then. Somewhere
      the night had accommodated him

      —at the place he was headed for
      or where, led by his delight,
      he came.

      “Before Dark” by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems. © North Point Press, 1985.

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    3. XII.
      by Wendell Berry

      The old man is in the last days
      of work he has done and loved
      for many years. He is mowing
      with his old team, the white horse
      and the black, on the open hillside
      under the open sky, within
      the surrounding woods. This work
      once was known by many
      of his kind, and he is one
      of the last to know it. But now
      as his time grows scarce, his work
      rarer by the day, its sights and motions
      could be filmed, its sounds recorded,
      it could be preserved perhaps forever
      by wonders of modern technology.
      He says no. He thinks no.
      He refuses with his whole heart
      the already futile wish to make
      of a past present a future past.
      Being so saved, his days
      would be lost, would be no longer
      even a memory. He needs these last
      of his workdays. He needs them to be
      his last, his own, such days
      as do not come to one unwilling
      to let them go. Had he been unwilling
      for them to go, they would not yet
      have come. Had he not been glad
      to be the only one to know them,
      he would never have known them.
      If he remembers them to the last, giving
      his thanks, how great will be his reward!

      “XII.” by Wendell Berry from A Small Porch. © Counterpoint, 2016.

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    4. VII.
      by Wendell Berry

      What a wonder I was
      when I was young, as I learn
      by the stern privilege
      of being old: how regardlessly
      I stepped the rough pathways
      of the hillside woods,
      treaded hardly thinking
      the tumbled stairways
      of the steep streams, and worked
      unaching hard days
      thoughtful only of the work,
      the passing light, the heat, the cool
      water I gladly drank.

      “VII.” by Wendell Berry from A Small Porch. © Counterpoint, 2016.

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    5. Goods
      by Wendell Berry

      It’s the immemorial feelings
      I like the best: hunger, thirst,
      their satisfaction; work-weariness,
      earned rest; the falling again
      from loneliness to love;
      the green growth the mind takes
      from the pastures in March;
      The gayety in the stride
      of a good team of Belgian mares
      that seems to shudder from me
      through all my ancestry.

      “Goods” by Wendell Berry from New Collected Poems. © Counterpoint, 2012.

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