The Peace of Wild Things

While this book of poems, first published in 1964, does hark back to a past era, the poems themselves are timeless. There’s an underlying sense of peace, which gives me solace when I feel bleak and filled with a nameless anxiety. Despite the sorrows, there’s grace in these poems, and in the world Berry speaks of — a simpler world than the one we live in today. Yet, each time I read them, I’m enriched with comfort and hope that frees me from the melancholy of living in a modern world that appears to be losing its way.

I only discovered this masterpiece a year or so ago. I had been promising myself that I would read the work of Wendell Berry and I hadn’t got around to it. There’s no contemporary poet with such grace and simple beauty as this one. What I admire more than anything is that he doesn’t have to use big or difficult words to bring the world to life. Instead, he uses words a child would use and understand. But it’s what those pictures leave behind in our minds and hearts that are so incredible. It’s the gentleness and the grace of… show more.