Wendell Berry—prolific writer, farmer, activist, champion for the environment and for rural communities—died today at 92. His death hits me hard, because his writing has meant so much to me over the years. His poetry has been my steadfast companion for nearly 20 years, his novels have moved me to tears (Jayber Crow in particular has lodged into my heart), and his essays/nonfiction have been much-needed ballast to ground me in a loud, greedy, exploitative age.

My hope is this post can be a space for folks to celebrate Wendell Berry's work and legacy. Please feel free to share your personal experiences with Berry's writing, or favorite quotes, or your favorites of his books, etc.

I'll kick things off with this excerpt from one of my favorites of Berry's poems, "The Country of Marriage".

"Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange of my love and work for yours, so much for so much of an expendable fund. We don’t know what its limits are— that puts it in the dark. We are more together than we know, how else could we keep on discovering we are more together than we thought? You are the known way leading always to the unknown, and you are the known place to which the unknown is always leading me back. More blessed in you than I know, I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing not belittled by my saying that I possess it. [...]

Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark."