Natural Gifts with Wendell Berry

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Join us for an hour of stirring and straightforward wisdom from one of the most highly respected of modern American writers and poets. Using words like "affection" and "satisfaction," "care" and "joy," Berry calls for a re-evaluation of the basic values and practices of our lives. He illustrates his ideas with glimpses of his own life and those of his Kentucky farm neighbors, and describes a future where we can learn to find love, wisdom and meaning in the people, the places and the work of our own daily lives. "Abstractions don't work--abstractions are abstractions," he says. "You have to realize that finally you must do something." (hosted by Michael Toms)

Bio

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English, and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America." He's a veteran sage of sustainable agriculture; a progressive defender of virtue and tradition.

His books include:

• New Collected Poems (2013)
• The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (Sierra Club Books 1996)
• Standing by Words: Essays (North Point Press 1983)
• The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural (North Point Press 1981)
• The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982 (North Point Press 1985)
• Hannah Coulter (North Point Press 1985)
• What Are People For?: Essays (Counterpoint Press 1990, 2010)
• The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Shoemaker & Hoard 2003)
• The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard 2006)
• Fidelity: Five Stories (Pantheon 1992)

Host: Michael Toms       Interview Date: 12/2/1992       Program Number: 2362