from Terry Haik
I recently attended the screening of a documentary about Wendell Berry at the Louisville Art Museum.
Drew Perkins and I took what was then called “The Seer” in July. Now titled ‘See and see“From, if we are not fooled, Berry’s reluctance to be the central part of the film, the most touching for me was the initial sequence, where the voice of Berry’s sage reads his own poem” The Purpose “against the dizzying and fantastic mountings of visualizations, trying to reflect some of the more ideas in the ideas in
The switching in the title makes sense, since the documentary is really less for berries and its work and more about the realities of contemporary agriculture and switches for sure in the work of Berry, but in the same sense that farms and rural conditions were key topics in the work of Robert Frost.
See also Humble
Anyone who has read one of my own scriptures knows what an exceptional influence berry was on me as a writer, teacher and father. I created a kind of school model based on his work in 2012 called ‘The school from the inside out“They have exchanged letters with him and is even lucky to meet him last yearS
That’s right, the movie. You can Purchase the documentary hereAnd while I think he misses her to frame Berry for the widest possible audience, this is a rare look at a very private person and thus I can’t recommend it strong enough if you are a berry reader.
The problem of combining consumerism (ads, DVD sales, book sales) is not lost here, but I hope that the topic and distribution of the message exceed every inherent (and fearsome) irony when all pieces are considered as a whole. There is also a stanza that seems to be lacking from the voice that I included in the transcription below.
The poem is taken from ‘Choir with timber: the poems of the Saturday‘1979-1997, published by Counterpoint Press in 1998.
Purpose
from Wendel Berry
Even as I dreamed, I prayed that what I saw was only fear and without prediction,
because I saw the last known landscape destroyed because of
From the purpose – the soil bulldozed, the rock blown up.
Those who wanted to go home will never go home now.
I visited the offices where for the purpose,
Planning empty offices placed in rows.
I visited the strong factories where the machines were made
This would move forward to the target.
I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies;
I saw the poisoned river – the mountain thrown into the valley;
I came to the city that no one recognized because it looked like any other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnoamed feet of these
whose eyes were aimed at the target.
Their passage had erased the graves and monuments
by those who died in pursuit of the target
And who has long been forgotten,
According to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten
Forget they forgot.
Men and women, and the children were now pursuing the goal, as if no one had ever pursued him.
The competitions and gender are now intertwined in pursuit of the goal.
Once the renowned, once oppressed,
They were now free to sell to the highest auction participant
and enter the best paid prisons in the pursuit of the target,
which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles,
which was to clear the way to the victory,
which had to clear the way to the promotion,
to salvation,
To progress,
to the completed sale,
to the signature of the contract,
which was to clear the way to self -realization, for self -creation,
from which no one who ever wanted to go home would ever get there,
Because every remembered place was displaced;
Every love is unloved,
Each vow is not expelled,
Every word no matter
to make a way to pass the crowd of individualized,
Autonomous, self -fighter, homeless with their many eyes
open to the target they still do not perceive in the long distance,
After never knowing where they were going,
After they never knew where they came from.
From ‘Choir with timber: the poems of the Saturday‘1979-1997, by Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, 1998
The “goal” read by Wendel Berry
