Berry, Wendell

Wendell Berry, in full Wendell Erdman Berry, (born August 5, 1934, Port Royal, Kentucky, U.S.), American author whose nature poetry, novels of America’s rural past, and essays on ecological responsibility grew from his experiences as a farmer.

Berry was educated at the University of Kentucky, Lexington (B.A., 1956; M.A., 1957). He later taught at Stanford and New York universities and spent a year in Italy. In 1964 he returned to the University of Kentucky to teach and settled on a farm near his birthplace. He left the university in 1977 to concentrate on writing and farming.

Berry’s poetry—from his first collection, The Broken Ground (1964), to such later volumes as Sabbaths (1987)—reveals a steadily growing concern with the abuse of the land and with the need to restore the balance of nature. The theme of human responsibility to the earth is also present in his novels, including The Memory of Old Jack (1974), which consists of the reflections, dating back to the Civil War years, of a 92-year-old rural man. That book was part of a series of various works set in the fictional Kentucky town of Port William. Later novels in the series included Jayber Crow (2000), Hannah Coulter (2004), and Andy Catlett: Early Travels (2007). Berry also published short stories, including the collection Watch with Me: And Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch (1994).

Among Berry’s nonfiction prose works, The Hidden Wound (1970) explores racism and The Unsettling of America (1977) discusses the late 20th-century crises of culture and morality. His essays in The Long-Legged House (1969), The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge (1971), The Gift of Good Land (1981), Standing by Words (1985), Home Economics (1987), What Are People For? (1990), Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community (1993), and Another Turn of the Crank (1995) expand on his themes of ecology and human responsibility. Library of America also published two volumes of his essays in 2019.