Tag: Wendell Berry

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.

Thinking About Wendell Berry’s Leftist Lament (and More)

Wendell Berry’s sprawling, uneven, brilliant, and sometimes frustrating The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice will likely not, I think,...

The Long Row

So to all my friends in this haven, this meeting place, this village green—you lovers of federalism, distributism, neighbors, neighborhoods, regional accents, little platoons, and forty acres and a mule—happy anniversary.

Walk Boldly, Darlin’ Clementine

Walk boldly. Whistle not, but do keep walking. Keep walking right on by it and let the dead bury the dead.

It Started with a Dis…

The Empire did not fall the day Front Porch Republic rose. But in 15 years FPR has done much more than simply add weight to the human scale. It has revivified the most humane and practical traditions in American social, cultural, economic, and political life and thought.