The public performance of poetry, writes Wendell Berry in the preface to A Timbered Choir, has become vogue in the English-speaking world. Yet, he counters, his poems are created in silence and solitude, which may be the best way to read these thoughtful lyrics about country life, verses populated by trees, horses, rivers, and stars. This volume gathers nearly 20 years' worth of Berry's Sabbath poems, written after Sunday morning walks across the fields and bottomlands of northern Kentucky.


From Library Journal
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Award, Berry (A World Lost, LJ 10/15/96) spends Sunday mornings in walking meditation in the forests and fields around his Port Royal, KY, farm. During these walks he writes, and he has brought many of these poems together in the present volume. Berry has long been an articulate and passionate defender of the environment, and his "Sabbath poems," spanning 20 years, bring the reader close to the earth, the fields and flowers, richness of the soil, and diversity of the seasons: "Too late for frost, too early for flies,/ the air carries only birdsong, the long/ breath of wind in leaves." The poet has a marvelous ear for interior rhyme: "Horse and cow,/ plow and hoe, grass to graze/ and hay to mow have brought me/ here, and taught me where I am." These poems are not uniformly pastoral; Berry reflects, too, on war, technology, and the economy in these pages, but always with a heartfelt devotion first and foremost for the earth. A contemplative treasure; highly recommended.?Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., HaywardCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Berry has continued periodically to write poems out-of-doors on days of little other work. This book reprints Sabbaths (1987), a collection of that writing, adding to it about one and a half times as much new work. The tenor of these poems written--and, Berry says, best read--in silence and solitude has changed since 1987. Many are still meditative religious lyrics on death and transcendence, the holiness of creation, and submitting to nature's unalterable patterns, which, for Berry, include marriage and community. But lately, his patience tried, Berry protests the destructiveness of specifically American ways of farming and resource management, and one quite long poem describing the year's work on his farm is his graceful contribution to the ancient tradition of Hesiod's Works and Days and Virgil's Georgics. If his mood is more variable, though, his craftsmanship remains impeccable. Few other poets have such chaste and precise diction or manage line and stanza with such unaffected serenity. Ray Olson


Book Description
Berry's Sabbath poems embrace much that is elemental to human life-beauty, death, peace, and hope. For more than two decades, Wendell Berry has spent his Sunday mornings in a kind of walking meditation, observing the world and writing poems. A small collection of Berry's Sabbath poems was published in 1987, but A Timbered Choir gathers all of these singular poems written to date. Many years of writing have won Wendell Berry the affection of a broad public. He is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is always assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of truths revealed.


About the Author
Wendell Berry lives and works with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Port Royal, Kentucky. An essayist, novelist, and poet, he is the author of more than thirty books. Berry has received numerous awards, including the T. S. Eliot Award, the John Hay Award, the Lyndhurst Prize, and the Aiken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In quiet contemplation of a complex world, Berry focuses on a place or a moment. Reverence and understanding often emerge from the stillness. A small gathering of Berry's Sabbath poems were published in 1987. Now the whole series from 1979 to 1997 is collected in one book, celebrating the broad range of this vital and transforming poet.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine

With a mystic's knowledge of silence, darkness, awe, longing, praise and light, Berry provides spiritually renewing instruction through his beautiful contemplative verse.

Library Journal

Winner of the T.S. Eliot Award, Berry (A World Lost, LJ 10/15/96) spends Sunday mornings in walking meditation in the forests and fields around his Port Royal, KY, farm. During these walks he writes, and he has brought many of these poems together in the present volume. Berry has long been an articulate and passionate defender of the environment, and his "Sabbath poems," spanning 20 years, bring the reader close to the earth, the fields and flowers, richness of the soil, and diversity of the seasons: "Too late for frost, too early for flies,/ the air carries only birdsong, the long/ breath of wind in leaves." The poet has a marvelous ear for interior rhyme: "Horse and cow,/ plow and hoe, grass to graze/ and hay to mow have brought me/ here, and taught me where I am." These poems are not uniformly pastoral; Berry reflects, too, on war, technology, and the economy in these pages, but always with a heartfelt devotion first and foremost for the earth. A contemplative treasure; highly recommended.Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward

Stephen R. Whited - Book

With a mystic's knowledge of silence, darkness, awe, longing, praise and light, Berry provides spiritually renewing instruction through his beautiful contemplative verse.

Philadelphia Inquirer