FARMING: A Handbook

by Wendell Berry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 1970

Not long ago these poems would probably have been dismissed as corn, despite their low-key lyrical beauties. For one thing, their style is uniformly and frankly ingratiating. For another, they evangelize for the simplified life and a retreat to the land--""Frost's one-man revolution."" But yesterday's plain-dirt philosophy has lately yielded the increasingly popular ideas of conservation, craftsmanship, and dropping out, and the deliberately rural has become something of an urban vogue. These pieces are not merely a contribution to the cult, however; they are too substantially turfy and consistent to be imagined as anything but a personal statement, and a single-minded one, of joy in harmony with nature. We find occasional flowers in crannied walls, but a number well below a reasonable depletion allowance for nature poetry; and the jest folks from the earlier novels (Nathan Coulter, 1960; A Place On Earth, 1967) make a fretful but happily brief appearance in the verse-drama ""The Bringer of Water."" Generally this gives a feeling of honesty and proportion, nicely enlivened by the declamations of the ""Mad Farmer,"" and the rich images soothe handily in the absence of live greens.

Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION