Tag: Wendell Berry

The Very Online Culture Wars

The Very Online Right might be riding high now, but I anticipate that the election jackpot of the moment will not last and that this victory will soon look more like Las Vegas at noon, beaten down and tawdry under the merciless exposure of the midday western sun.

Belonging to the Garden

I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.

A Homeward Calling: Review of Tony Woodlief’s We Shall Not All Sleep

One of the novel’s achievements is the way that it unfolds this centuries-long story with both clarity and subtlety, establishing a clear feel for right and wrong while casting no irreproachable heroes and very few villains. 

Wheeler Catlett’s Love Beyond Organization in Wendell Berry’s “Fidelity”

Organized community events bring people together and are an integral part of forging strong communal bonds in a place. Like the law, they serve a purpose in a community’s ecosystem of relationships.

Southern Appalachia is a Place

These questions would cause little debate or consternation without the importance of place tethering them. And, despite the erasure of communitarian mindsets and regional identity, place still matters.

The Jigsaw Revolution: Finding Peace, Piece by Piece

The way of the puzzler is not about reaching a certain goal. If it were, the perfectly fine image would never have been broken up to begin with. The way of the puzzler is about the puzzling itself.

Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s...

Do we love the soil and the creatures put in our stead, or do we prefer the images our devices project at us? While the choice is not always so cut and dry, Mannon’s book can help us begin to retool our imaginations and ennoble common labor again.

Every Day Do Something that Won’t Compute

How has your intellectual practice prepared you not just for success but also for failure?

Bjartur and Berry: Contrasting Visions of Community and Affection

Seen through his most redemptive lens, Bjartur stands as a cautionary tale for those who would pursue independence as an end in itself.

Working for the Life Beyond Words

In his brief and not altogether satisfying rejoinder to the question, “why write?” Berry says, “To serve that triumph I have done all the rest,” and he ends the poem there. “That triumph” is the triumph of the way of love, the life of silence.