In Wendell Berry’s upcoming *The New Collected Poems*, the poet revisits for the first time his immensely popular *Collected Poems*, which *The New York Times Book Review* described as “a straight-forward search for a life connected to the soil, for marriage as a sacrament and family life” that “affirms a style that is resonant with the authentic,” and “[returns] American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose.”

In *The New Collected Poems*, Berry reprints the nearly two hundred pieces in *Collected Poems*, along with the poems from his most recent collections—*Entries*, *Given*, and *Leavings*—to create an expanded collection, showcasing the work of a man heralded by *The Baltimore Sun* as “a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau . . . a major poet of our time.”

Wendell Berry is the author of over forty works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the T.S. Eliot Award, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for writing, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. While he began publishing work in the 1960s, *Booklist* has written that “Berry has become ever more prophetic,” clearly standing up to the test of time.

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### From Booklist

*Starred Review* So eloquent and substantial are Berry’s fiction and essays that his poetry can seem ancillary. Read in chronology and near-completely in this volume, however, his verse shines out as the radiant heart of his prophetic art. He has been the foremost American poet of place, which for him means the Kentucky farming community in which he has lived and worked as farmer-writer in the tradition of Hesiod and Virgil, demonstrating the propriety and the virtue of living with the land and its creatures and arguing vehemently and cogently for the integrity of agriculture as the basis of human thriving. Berry’s poems initially show him discovering his understanding of the world and human livelihood and then how that understanding works out in the lives of his family and community members; that is, in farming as a calling, a tradition, and a passion. Yes, nature is often his subject, but death is his most frequent concern, which he probes and ponders until there is nothing fearsome left in it. As his poetic career progresses, cogitation decreases, storytelling increases, and, most lately, epigram burgeons with stinging and amusing effectiveness. Moreover, reading his poems is like drinking fresh springwater. --Ray Olson

### Review

Praise for Collected Poems:

“[Berry’s poems] shine with a gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life.”–The Christian Science Monitor

“Wendell Berry is one of those rare individuals who speaks to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life, be they those of composing a poem, preparing a hill for planting, raising a family, working for the good of oneself and one’s neighbors, loving.”–The Bloomsbury Review

Praise for Entries:

“If you’re wondering where all the sincerity has gone in contemporary poetry, you may rest assured that Wendell Berry has it.”–Bookpress

“Disarming in its apparent simplicity and powerful in its lack of guile.”–San Marcos Daily Record

Praise for Given:

“For those who believe that life and the world are gifts, this is an invaluable book.”–Booklist

Praise for Leavings:

“[Berry’s] sage mind and poetic skills combine to skewer political arrogance, savage commercial folly, muse on growing old and lament a good dog’s death. Mindful of time and earth, of joy and love, Berry calls us to the hard work of a hope and peace and gratitude so incarnate that they rest ‘on the ground underfoot.’”–Christian Century