Wendell Berry , one of America ’s brightest and most gifted authors , recently sit down for an interview withbroadcast legend Bill Moyers . They spoke about Berry ’s 2011 sit - in in the Kentucky Governors ’ office , his poetry , and what the answer might be to the environmental crisis facing our nation .
Working his family’s Kentucky farm influenced his world view
Wendell Berry has been masterfully writing indefense of the environmentfor go on forty years now . Remarkably , at 79 , and perhaps a will tofarming via sustainable method , Berry and his brother still work the country their kinsfolk has owned for about 200 years .
Berry grew up in Kentucky and studied at the University of Kentucky , where he realize a master ’s point . From there , he canvass creative writing under a Wallace Steigner Fellowship from Stanford University . Berry eventually taught at Stanford , as well as Georgetown College , New York University , the University of Cincinnati , Bucknell University , and the University of Kentucky .
Influenced by a childhood of economic hardship – his founder and grandfather capable to the ageless down pressure sensation on crop price at the hand of the reigning Monopoly – Wendell Berry frequently takes aim at the crossing of capitalism and the surround ( or the Fannie Farmer ) which rarely ends well . Watching his dear commonwealth exploited by Big Coal , and the Kentucky River envenom by effluents from minelaying operations , thing appear to consider heavily on him these days . Yet in his poems and essays , always the contrarian , he mostly always finds his way back to hopefulness . And that ’s his trick .
“ It ’s powerful hard justly now to cogitate of anything that ’s precious that is n’t menace . But mayhap that ’s an advantage . The poet , William Butler Yeats said somewhere , “ thing reveal themselves overtake away . ” And it may be that the peril that we ’ve now inflicted upon every treasured thing reveals the preciousness of it and demo us our duty . ”
Award winning author
Berry has been a prolific author , releasing more than 40 works of poetry , fiction , and essay in his vocation thus far . His first novel , Nathan Coulter , was release in 1960 , and his latest , Whitefoot , publish in 2009 . In the 1970 ’s and 1980 ’s , he pen for Rodale Press ’ Organic Gardening and The New Farm , and his work has appeared regularly inThe commonwealth . Collections of his essays are repackaged and unblock on a regular groundwork .
Wendell Berry ’s ever - growing assemblage of awards and accolades reads like a author ’s dreaming :
In 2012 Berry was ask for to bear The Jefferson Lecture , our nation ’s highest honor for imposing intellectual achievement ( read a transcript of the lecture here ) , and was awarded a Freedom Medal from the Roosevelt Institute .
Recently , the poet laureate of the environmental campaign consented to a rare interview with Bill Moyers ( video below ) . Age has not cooled his passion for addressing thepillaging of the environmentin the name of capitalism . Wendell Berry is , as always , eloquent in the interview and offers a spell of startling advice for untested environmentalist :
“ When you ask the doubtfulness what is the big answer , then you ’re implying that we can bring down the result . But that ’s the problem we ’re in to start with – we ’ve tried to impose the answers . The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and pronounce this is what I desire and this is what I anticipate from you . You take the air up and you say what do you need ? And you commit yourself to say all in good order , I ’m not going to do any broad damage here until I cognize what it is that you are asking of me . And this ca n’t be hurried . This is the dreadful situation that youthful people are in . I cerebrate of them and I say well , the berth you ’re in now is a position that ’s going to call for a lot of patience . And to be patient in an emergency is a fearful trial . ”
