Abstract
The subject of this essay, Wendell Berry, grows out of the New Criticism, but he has developed in his own ways. Increasingly, he has come to emphasize in his poetry a sense of history and place, the seeking of roots, a refusal to consider literature apart from the larger concerns of life. Among other things, this humanistic element has given him an interesting “prose side” rare among contemporary poets. At a time when “literary intellectuals” have often retreated from a serious role in the affairs of the world, Berry has remained a moralist with the high aspi- rations of a Victorian sage: the ambition, with literature as his vehicle, to discover and chart out a decent, sane, meaningful life in a world seemingly indecent, insane, absurd. Indeed, Berry is the kind of poet who finds the creation of good literature concomitant with and inseparable from the creation of a good life.