The Memory of Old Jack
by Wendell Berry
also by Wendell Berry ...
A Timbered Choir
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 and healing power of family, memory, and community.
In A Timbered Choir, Berry’s fourteenth collection of poetry, his work is exceptionally poised and spiritual. For more than two decades, he has spent his Sunday mornings in a walking reverie, observing the world and writing poetry. This collection gathers all of these singular poems—called “Sabbath poems”—written to date.
In his preface to the collection, Berry writes about the growing audience for public poetry readings. While he believes this is a good sign for civilization, he hopes we will not lose sight of the private life of poetry, a dimension ultimately more meaningful and important, he insists. He tells us that his Sabbath poems were “written in silence, in solitude, mainly out of doors,” and his hope is for readers to read them as they were written: “slowly, and with more patience than effort.”
If this is an unusual wish, it proves unusually rewarding; for whether he is writing about a landscape transformed by spring or the day when his granddaughters visit the Holocaust Museum for the first time, Berry reminds us that there is a quietness that allows us to pay closer attention to the world and our place in it. The power of his poetry lies in the strength of the truths he reveals.
—press release, 1998 Counterpoint edition
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