books

Wendell Berry, thank you

I am an avid poetry reader.  Passionate, even.  I know this is unusual (and not the coolest thing in the world).  I have bought poetry books, gone to readings, eagerly shared passages with friends, found myself moved to tears by the lines of others.  Poetry is language at its most essential: stripped down, bare, in flight.  I have stayed up far too late because I couldn’t put a book of poetry down.  Adrienne Rich, Maxine Kumin, Anne Sexton (those three women were the subject of my senior thesis in college), Stanley Kunitz,  Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Theodore Roethke, Wendell Berry.  I could go on.  But this post is about Wendell Berry.

Wendell Berry, who died on August 31 at 92.  I am far from a Berry scholar, and have been reading eagerly essays by those who were.  He was a farmer and a conversationist, a writer of both essays and poetry.  His work is rich with themes of home, of meaning, of the ways the simplest of things can bespeak deep, earnest truth. I write and talk all the time about the words that live in our heads – the things we think about, unbidden, and lines of Wendell Berry’s work are in the most exalted pantheon of the those for me.

When I sat down to look through what I’ve written about Berry over the years, there is a clear theme: the rich fecundity of darkness, the need to trust it, the things that can be learned therein, and the ways in which darkness lends meaning to light.

I have worked in the same small office since 2001.  For a quarter century in that tiny room I have swum in words – read them, thought them, written them.  In all that time there has only been one set of words on the wall.  It is this short poem by Wendell Berry:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
We have come to our real work.
And when we no longer know which way to go,
We have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

I wanted to collect here the things I’ve written about Berry, about the themes I return to, about the ways his work speaks to my mind and my heart.  If I can help one more person find Berry’s luminous, gently thought provoking words then I will be happy.

Thoughts on darkness.  The idea that there is beauty and power and transformation in the darkness, even if it is scary.  That we need darkness to appreciate light.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.  To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.

Gravity is grace.

The river’s injury is its shape
We are what we are given and what is taken away

Advent.  More thoughts on light and darkness, on their interconnectedness.  Leaning into that darkness, seeing that there is beauty there.  Surprising, staggering, serendipitous beauty.  Divinity buried in the drudgery.  Dark feet and dark wings.

A Darkness Full of Light.

If you are interested, the New York Times obituary of Wendell Berry is here.

 

Enchantment

Sometimes a book says things that are in my heart, puts words to things I have felt but been unable to express.  Enchantment by Katherine May is such a book.

“We are a forgetful species, obsessed with the endless succession of tasks that hover over our days, and negligent of the grand celestial drama unfolding around us.  And here I am, remembering.”

“Slowly and slyly it had crept into me, this conviction of . . . what? That something is there, something vast and wise and beautiful that pervades all of life. Something that is present, attentive, behind the everyday. A frequency of consciousness at the low end of the dial, amid the static. A stratum of experience waiting to be uncovered.”

“The act of seeking attuned my senses and primed my mind to make associations.  I was open to magic. and I found some, although not the magic I was looking for.  That’s what you find over an over again when you go looking: something else.”

I think I’m beginning to understand that the quest is the point. Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. It becomes meaningful when we invest it with meaning. The magic is of our own conjuring. Hierophany—that revelation of the sacred—is something that we bring to everyday things, rather than something that is given to us. That quality of experience that reveals to us the workings of the world, that comforts and fascinates us, that ushers us towards a greater understanding of the business of being human: it is not in itself rare. What is rare is our will to pursue it. If we wait passively to become enchanted, we could wait a long time.  But seeking is a kind of work. I don’t mean heading off on wild road trips just to see the stars that are shining above your own roof. I mean committing to a lifetime of engagement: to noticing the world around you, to actively looking for small distillations of beauty, to making time to contemplate and reflect. To learning the names of the plants and places that surround you, or training your mind in the rich pathways of the metaphorical. To finding a way to express your interconnectedness with the rest of humanity. To putting your feet on the ground, every now and then, and feeling the tingle of life that the earth offers in return. It’s all there, waiting for our attention. Take off your shoes, because you are always on holy ground.

We All Want Impossible Things

I knew Catherine Newman was a kindred spirit (“the happy-saddest person who ever lived” – we might be tied) and I knew I loved her writing.   But wow.  I just finished We All Want Impossible Things and I am actively crying and feeling that deep ache of how beautiful life is, at the same time.  This gorgeous book made me sad and happy simultaneously, made me laugh and cry, reminded me of all the ways life is mundane and luminous in the same day, same hour.  It’s about friendship and family and being confused and being clear, about the people who accompany us in this life, about all the ways we abide by and honor those we love most.  Run, don’t walk.  This book is glorious and heartbreaking and abolutely vital.  As CS Lewis said, we read to know we are not alone.  Thank you, Catherine Newman, thank you for doing that with this book (and all your work, honestly).

One of my favorite quotes is below.  The other is:

“Is it better to have loved and lost?  Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no.  And yet.  Here we are, hurtling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief.”

Signal Fires

I walked the dog this morning before the sun came up and at one point I stopped, head tipped up, looking at the sky spangled with stars and thinking of Waldo.  Waldo who is, as Dani Shapiro said on Tuesday with Claire Messud at Brookline Booksmith, the beating heart of this beautiful book.  I finished Signal Fires last night and it without question belongs on my “best of 2022” list.  What a gorgeous novel, both quiet and compelling, full of the shining strands that weave us together and into our own individual lives and into the great wide world at the same time.  To me, this story is above all about time and memory (which are the great preoccupations of my own life).  It’s also about love and family and forgiveness and the ineffable, unavoidable echo of the past through the present.  I’m so grateful and honored to call Dani my teacher, literally (I took her class for several years) and figuratively (have read all of her work and consider her a role model both on the pages and in life).  If you haven’t read Signal Fires, run.  If you have, I’d love to talk about it.  Thank you, Dani.

Favorite books of 2022

I’ve written holiday book roundups for a lot of years – 2021, 2020, 2019. 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.  Old posts include lots of children’s books, if you are looking for that!

Today I want to share the books I’ve loved most in 2022.  It is my firm view that books make the best gift (pity my godchildren), so if you’re in the market for that, these would all be good ideas! A wonderful way to discover even more titles worth gifting is through mypassion books, where engaging stories are always waiting.

Fiction

Bewilderment, Richard Powers – A gorgeous book about family and amazement and the things that matter the most.  Warning: this is very sad.  Powers’ last novel, The Overstory, was my favorite the year I read it.  The books are very different but share a deep sense of awe about the natural world.

Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka – I couldn’t stop thinking about this book after I finished it.  I’m a true crime follower and I found this investigation of the person behind brutality profoundly compelling.

Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel -This novel, which reminded me of my 2021 favorite (Cloud Cuckoo Land), is futiristic and has elements of sci fi (a genre people are often surprised to learn I like).  I found it spare and powerful and beautiful.

Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus – Let me start by saying the cover of this book did not, for me, represent what is a strong story about feminism, intelligence, and pushing forward in the face of a world that’s not really ready for you.  Also, best fictional dog I met this year: Six Thirty.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin – This book might have been the biggest surprise of the year for me. It’s about video game developers – a world I don’t know anything about and would not have told you is a real interest.  And it is also the most beautiful character story about the way we love people in so many different ways, about passion and the ways the past echos into the present.

Memoir

Lost & Found, Kathryn Schultz – This is my favorite book of the year.  Schultz writes gorgeously about the loss of her father, the near-simultaneous finding of her wife, and about the critical, indelible ways the two interact (my favorite section of the book is the third – “&”) to create a richer experience of both.  This memoir is about nothing less than life itself.

In Love, Amy Bloom – Amy Bloom writes with unflinching intimacy about her husband’s decision to end his own life in the face of a terminal diagnosis.  Cliche alert, but also a truth: this is a book about death that sheds new light on life.

Bomb Shelter, Mary Laura Philpott – This book made me laugh and it made me nod in understanding.  Philpott excavates the terror and the sublime and the mundane that coexist in every day of adulthood, parenthood, personhood.  I loved this book.

Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron – A very different story than Philpott’s, but also one that gives us an up close view of life’s roller coaster, and, like Schultz’s memoir, Ephron’s talks about the ways that the hardest and best things in life can often – by coincidence or by necessity? – coexist.

What are your favorite books you’ve read this year?