shopping cart
Call us: 800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.

Related Aisles

Original Essays | June 22, 2009

All posts by Bethany Moreton Culture War on Aisle 5? Wal-Mart, Evangelicals, and "Extreme Capitalism"

0 comments By Bethany Moreton

"In the 'culture wars' narrative of the Republican ascendancy, this slippage represents the greatest con in recent history: while you rush to defend marriage or protect the unborn, please pay no attention to the financier behind the curtain." Continue »

  1. $19.56 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

    Bethany Moreton
Ships free on qualified orders.
$23.00
HARDCOVER, NEW
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
Qty Store Section
2 Burnside Poetry- A to Z
5 Local Warehouse Poetry- A to Z
6 Remote Warehouse Poetry- A to Z
Click here to hide store locations


Used Book Alert Receive an email when this ISBN is available used.

Window Poems

by Wendell Berry

Window Poems Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Since 1979, Wendell Berry has taken a walk almost every Sunday. Often on these walks of meditation and reflection, he finds himself making notes for poems. Some years he has accomplished as many as fifteen or twenty poems from those walks, while in other years only half a dozen. The resultant work has been published in collections of Sabbath Poems, a precursor to which was The Window Poems.

The Window Poems were composed while Berry looked out of the multi-paned window of his writing studio, “The Long-Legged House.” The house is near the renovated farmhouse where Berry and his wife raised their children and continue to live. These poems contemplate Berry's personal life as much as they ponder the seasons he witnesses through the window. This beautiful book was first designed, composed, and printed on a Washington handpress by Bob Barris, at the Press on Scroll Road, with wood engravings by Wesley Bates. Including an introduction by James Baker Hall, this early sequence of poems signals and celebrates the groundwork of Berry's life.

back to top

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Grady Harp, November 4, 2007 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
'Sometimes he thinks the earth might be better without humans.'

Connected. Perhaps that is the operative descriptor of American poet Wendell Berry. Now in his 70s Berry's influence on contemporary poetry is not unlike that of William Carlos Williams or Robert Frost, among others of an earlier time, who found beauty in the quiet of nature and the honesty of tilling the land. This collection WINDOW POEMS dates back to the fifties and sixties when Berry lived in minimalist cabin on the Kentucky River, a cabin later transformed into a 'house', the feature of which was a large, paned window through which Berry gazed, pondered and wrote these 27 interconnected poems. They are simple observations with profound meanings and readily identify Berry's concerns with agrarian values, connection to nature and man's place in that order, a work ethic and commitment to fidelity that enhances our joy of the earth's bounty, a bounty that most assuredly includes the mystery of approaching and receding seasons, along with his disdain for environmental abuse, violence (both against fellow man and against nature), and ignorance of the secrets of the universal order.

This book is a work of art, in content to be sure, but also in design and presentation. The highly regarded poet James Baker Hall has provided a Foreword titled 'Wendell's Window & The Wind's Eye', and in this simple yet eloquent essay Hall describes Berry's history and the significance of this particular collection of poems. Enhancing the beauty of the book are wood engravings by Wesley Bates whose craftsmanship captures the natural wonders of Berry's poems.

But in the end it is the transcendent splendor of these poems that takes the readers breath, holds it for a moment and then allows it to form a sigh of appreciation. 'In the Heron's eye/ is one of the dies of change./ Another/ is in the sun./ Each thing is carried/ beyond itself./ The man of the window/ lives at the edge,/ knowing the approach/ of what must be, joy/ and dread.' And the last fragment '..The window has an edge/ that is celestial,/ where the eyes are surpassed.' This volume, so perfectly designed, contains many moments for the reader's keeping. Welcome to Wendell Berry. Grady Harp
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(8 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
back to top

Product Details

ISBN:
9781593761561
Author:
Berry, Wendell
Publisher:
Shoemaker & Hoard
With:
Bates, Wesley
Foreword:
Hall, James Baker
Author:
Berry, Wendell
Subject:
American - General
Subject:
Single Author / American
Publication Date:
March 2007
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
80
Dimensions:
972x664x49 67
back to top
  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.