Wendell Berry publishes the poetic (and chronological) sequel to This Day
Eleven years ago, I read and wrote about a then-new collection of poems by Wendell Berry. Simply named This Day, it was a collection of old and new poems — what Berry called “Sabbath poems” — published between 1979 and 2013. He suggested reading these poems in a quiet place — the woods, a quiet room — because that’s where poems of rest and reflection should be read.
Now we have the sequel: Another Day: Sabbath Poems 2013-2023. Berry turned 91 this month (Aug. 5, to be precise), and he’s still writing poems just as good as those he wrote almost half a century ago. The poems are also just as consistent as they were in 1979; he has never tired of writing about the themes of family, relations, community, land, and landscape, all of it embodying his sense of place. His fictional works, notably the Port William novels and short stories, are about the same thing; he even has a new Port William novel publishing Oct. 7, entitled Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story.
Another Day exhibits no progression or development of themes and ideas. Berry has remained remarkably consistent; his views on land, farming, and seeing “Big Agriculture” and “progress” as more akin to destruction than development are the same as they were when he started writing. Consistency, however, doesn’t mean repetition; he varies his subjects broadly, ranging from poetry itself to the times of day, nature themes, people who have touched and shaped his life, and looking back at life well-lived.
Berry’s poems on aging and examinations of his own life particularly resonate. In a poem from 2018, he writes, “It is no privilege to become the one living authority on your life.” I share that sentiment; I have one relative left, a great-aunt of 97, who’s known me my entire life. He broadens his focus to life in general: “It is no distinction to have seen the last of much good gone forever.” These are not the typical thoughts of older people; Berry has been exploring these ideas since at least his 30s and 40s.
A poem from 2013 (untitled):
Let us say there is no life after death
and you know for sure there is not. Let us
say you are dying and you know for sure
that you are, and you are seeing for the last time
this green pasture enclosed in the woods
and the sky of shape-shifting clouds,
a hawk crossing, a buzzard circling
high up and slow, the sheep flock
grazing at ease in the cool of the day,
the yellow flowers of summer’s end
lighting around them, and the air alive
with the newest passages of small birds,
dragonflies, butterflies,
the hunting wasp flying home
with its prey. And you, now seeing all this
for the last time, as if for the first,
knowing as you always have known that you see it
only once, once for all,
in its one moment of ending and coming
to be, in its moment of shrugging off
the thought of ending, of becoming—you
see that you are no longer counting,
but have passed across into a place
you have never been, have always been:
new, a new earth, forever new.
Two poems from 2023 are included, one short and one long. The long poem (eight pages) is an extended conversation with “a familiar voice,” containing a judgment and benediction over a long life. The short poem (seven lines) ends the collection; Berry writes of how a stem of native rye, breaking out in full sun and soon engulfed by the darkness of life, reminds him of himself. Indeed, it reminds all of us of ourselves.
Wendell Berry
Born in Henry County, Kentucky, where his family had farmed for five generations, Berry received B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Kentucky. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and studied in Italy and France under a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He taught at New York University and the University of Kentucky, served as a writer for Rodale Press, and has published eight novels and numerous collections of short stories and poems. Since 1965, he and his wife have lived at Lane’s Landing, a farm in Henry County close to the town of Port Royal on the Ohio River, which has served as the model for Port William in his novels and stories.
Another Day is a work of meditation, beauty, and quiet reflection. Berry has lived a long and examined life; these poems amplify what’s been important to him, the lost that can be mourned, and the lasting that can be cherished.
Related:
Robert Frost, Wendell Bery, and the Woods
Photo by Gabriel Caparo, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
- Poets and Poems: Wendell Berry and “Another Day” - August 12, 2025
- Poets and Poems: Jeffrey Bilbro and “Exile’s Journey” - August 7, 2025
- David Jones Writes an Extraordinary World War I Poem - August 5, 2025
Leave a Reply