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Here, Wendell Berry revisits for the first time his immensely popularCollected Poems, whichThe New York Times Book Review described as "a straightforward search for a life connected to the soil, for marriage as a sacrament, and family life" and "[returns] American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose." InNew Collected Poems, Berry reprints the nearly two hundred pieces inCollected Poems, along with the poems from his most recent collections--Entries,Given, andLeavings--to create an expanded collection, showcasing the work of a man heralded byThe Baltimore Sun as "a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau . . . a major poet of our time." Wendell Berry is the author of over forty works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. While he began publishing work in the 1960s,Booklist has written that "Berry has become ever more prophetic," clearly standing up to the test of time.… (more)
User reviews
That accessibility and his impatience with artifice in poetry or politics may suggest why some in the academic world ignore or disparage his writing.
The later collections are not as strong as those from 1994 and before. His elegies, especially the one for his grandfather, are haunting and universal. I highly recommend living with this collection for a while.