The Wheel

by Wendell Berry

Elegiac poems explore the cycle of birth, life, and death and examine the author's personal experiences

Genres: Poetry, Nature

Paperback

First published November 1, 1982

About the author

Wendell Berry was a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of Port William, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).

Berry was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He was also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 2014 to his death, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

abridged from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Tony Roberts]

If an alien were to land in Northern Kentucky and want to know more about his neighbors, the first person I would introduce him to is Wendell Berry. Berry is a farmer-poet, an educator-essayist, a story telling conservationist who celebrates creation while still honoring the Creator.

Much like Berry's other poetical works, this collection contains an earthy spirituality. Berry is at his best when he is remembering his neighbors, whom he loves deeply. This is quite evident at the end of his poem, "Requiem":

Now may the grace of death
be upon him, his spirit blessed
in deep song of the world
and the stars turning, the seasons
returning, and long rest.

[Cheryl]

RISING
And that is our story,
not of time, but the forever
returning events of light,
ancient knowledge seeking
its new minds. The man at dawn
in spring of the year,
going to the fields,
visionary of seed and desire,
is timeless as a star.

I wish I had read Berry earlier in my life, his work is based on farming and walking around the woods, but it really teaches us how to live. If you can’t farm, or garden, perhaps you can draw or paint, or even take photographs, and that helps learn the mind’s “resemblance to the earth through the shapes and changes of seasons.” When I walk across a path, preferable of dirt or rocky stones, there is a connection and transference, that helps me sing. Patterns and rituals still echo in our brains from our ancestors, and when it succeeds, it is another song, not for the ear but the mind. Don’t you know that the light makes a song, as well? Rain light, foliage light, all these things I have discovered on my own, and Berry knows them and has told us what to look for, again and again. Excellent book to read of his, if you can only read one.

DESOLATION
A gracious Spirit sings as it comes
and goes. It moves forever
among things. Earth and flesh, passing
into each other, sing together.
Turned against that song, we go
where no singing is or light
or need coupled with its yes,
but spite, despair, fear, and loneliness.
Unless the solitary will forbear,
time enters the flesh to sever
passion from all care,
annul the lineage of consequence.
Unless the solitary will forbear,
the blade enters the ground
to tear the world's comfort
out, by root and crown.

FROM THE DISTANCE
I.
We are others and the earth,
the living of the dead.
Remembering who we are,
we live in eternity;
any solitary act
is work of community.
2.
All times are one
if heart delight
in work, if hands
join the world right.
3.
The wheel of eternity is turning
in time, its rhymes, austere,
at long intervals returning,
sing in the mind, not in the ear.

RETURNING
I was walking in a dark valley
and above me the tops of the hills
had caught the morning light.
I heard the light singing as it went out
among the grassblades and the leaves.
I waded upward through the shadow
until my head emerged,
my shoulders were mantled with the light,
and my whole body came up
out of the darkness, and stood
on the new shore of the day.
Where I had come was home,
for my own house stood white
where the dark river wore the earth.
The sheen of bounty was on the grass,
and the spring of the year had come.

THE RIVER BRIDGED AND FORGOT
Bridged and forgot, the river
in unwearying descent
carries down the soil
of ravaged uplands, waste
and acid from the stripmines,
poisons of our false
prosperity. What mind
regains of clarity
mourns, the current a slow
cortege of everything
that we have given up,
the materials of Creation
wrecked, the strewed substance
of our trust and dignity.

But on still afternoons
of summer, the water's face
recovers clouds, the shapes
of leaves. Maple, willow,
sycamore stand light
and easy in their weight,
their branching forms formed
on the water, and yellow
warbler, swallow, oriole
stroke their deft flight
through the river's serene reflection
of the sky, as though, corrupted.

it shows the incorrupt.
Is this memory or promise?

This work that many loves
inspire teaches the mind
resemblance to the earth
in seasonal fashioning,
departures and returns
of song. The hands strive
against their gravity
for envisioned lights and forms,
fallings of harmony;
they strive, fail at their season's
end. The seasonless river
lays hand and handiwork
upon the world, obedient
to a greater mind, whole
past holding or beholding,
in whose flexing signature
all the dooms assemble
and become the lives of things.

We are betrothed
to change. By silence, so,
I learn my song. I earn
my sunny fields by absence, once

and to come. And I love you
as I love the dance that brings you
out of the multitude
in which you come and go.
Love changes, and in change is true.

IN RAIN
I.
I go in under foliage
light with rain-light
in the hill's cleft,
and climb, my steps
silent as flight
on the wet leaves.
Where I go, stones
are wearing away
under the sky's flow.

[Duane Gosser]

I rarely read poetry. I need to be in a certain mindset that I seldom visit. The stars/planets aligned as I was such a mood when I walked past this book on display at the library. As a native Kentuckian, I certainly know of Wendell Berry but am ashamed to say I had never read any of his poetry. Having had this particular collection recommended by both friends and family, I took a chance that a native son could reach me with his works. Boy was I right. For such a small collection, I was astounded at how many of the poems touched me and brought thoughts and memories to me in sometimes overwhelming waves. His love and connection to the land, family, and history is a treasure. I can't recommend this more enthusiastically.

[Elizabeth]

“The best teachers teach more
than they know. By their deaths
they teach most. They lead us beyond
what we know, and what they knew.”
—excerpt from The Elergy (1982)

“Sitting among the bluebells
in my sorrow, for lost time
and the never forgotten dead,
I saw a hummingbird stand
in air to drink from flowers.
It was a kiss he took and gave.
At his lightness and the ardor
of his throat, the song I live by
stirred my mind. I said:
‘By sweetness alone it survives.’”
—excerpt from The Strait

“We are what we are given
and what is taken away;
blessed be the name
of the giver and taker.
For everything that comes
is a gift, the meaning always
carried out of sight
to renew our whereabouts,
always a starting place.
And every gift is perfect
in its beginning, for it
is ‘from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights.’”
—excerpt from The Gift of Gravity

*New Collected Poems (2012)

[Sanjuro]

In the running for my favorite among Berry's poetry collections. The first few poems are especially powerful. The collection focuses on the cycle of life, or, "The Wheel," - the process of birth, growth, maturity, death, decay, and decay feeding new life all over again. The dead inform the living, which feeds on the land and the wisdom that came before it. Some of the earlier poems will get you to think about life and death in fresh ways.

[Jonathan Freeman]

These poems were beautiful, but not necessarily the most ADHD-friendly (in my experience).

For some reason it just consistently seemed to take extra effort for me to focus on and appreciate them appropriately, compared to a lot of the other poetry I've been reading and enjoying lately. The writing is still magnificent though, and if you're neurotypical, you may get more of a 5-star experience out of this book than I did.

[ANNA fayard]

“Elegy” — “Their eyes, having grieved all grief, were clear”

“Our Children, Coming of Age” — “When you meet the destined ones / now dancing toward you, / we will be in line behind you, / out of awareness for the time, / we whom you know, others we remember, / whom you do not remember, others / forgotten by us all”

[Wayne]

The last of a series of Berry’s poetry volumes I’ve been immersed in. Having recently moved back to the country, the poems came at the perfect time. and another meditation on the land, community, family, and our place in the circle of life. Wendell Berry gives much and is always worth the time.

[Dwayne Coleman]

Very good poetry.

[Jordan Kinsey]

One wonders if Maslanka knew the works of Berry, for there is definitely a fair share of the “powerful voice of the Earth” in this slim volume of poems. The first few, also, ate about my father.

[Shannon]

"The song will tell/how old love sweetens the fields." This is my second encounter with Wendell Berry, securing me as an admirer of his work for life. The Wheel explores the circle of life and death - in the individual, in the human race - and the convergence of the living and the dead in brief moments. In "Elegy," Berry has a dreamlike encounter with a deceased friend, and in "The Dance" he summons his people in an ancient circle of dancing, recalling loved ones in the communal festivity. Berry is down-to-earth and real; his poetry is beautiful, yet devoid of sentimentalism or lofty allusions. I would recommend this collection to anyone.

[Mark Nenadov]

Sixty pages of poetry that is simple, very accessible, and yet quite powerful.

[Samantha]

Beautiful.

[C. Noah Baoas]

Best enjoyed on rainy days, in a quiet space, next to a window!