Abstract
Rhyme and meter have certainly known their ups and downs in this century... Wendell Berry is part of this generation, and for most of his career he has followed its predilections as to form. It is of some present interest, therefore, that in his most recent book of poems, Sabbaths, he has made a major investment in traditional forms. It is worth considering just what Berry expects to get from formal verse that he could not have gotten from his earlier, free verse forms. Could this be simply a nostalgia for the poetry of his student days, the poetic equivalent of the recent revival of “Greek” life on college campuses, or does it suggest something new and necessary in his expression?