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In this series of poems, the guiding concerns of Berry’s life merge. Here plowing (and not just in a metaphorical sense – remember, Berry actually plows actual fields) turns up the field of memory and gives us a glimpse of the beauty that comes when we love a place and its people particularly and deeply.

The poems stand in relationship with each other. The fields of one poem become fertile soil for a meditation on language in the next, which in turn yields a prophetic vision in which “On the other side of the partition / the dead are living.”

Read all of “Six New Poems by Wendell Berry” in Plough.

Marce Catlett offers a path forward. At the same time, it reveals a road not taken. As the century moved along, the Democratic Party submitted more and more to the mandate of corporate power, doing its part to engineer what Sheldon Wolin acidly dubbed “Democracy Inc.” This structural submission became easier when, in a cultural sense, Pryor Berry became “backward” and John Berry Sr. a throwback. The party forgot both its story and its storytellers. Now we have Trump to pay.

Read all of “An Ancient Wealth” by Eric Miller at Commonweal Magazine.

Joan Zwagerman offers some thoughts on the should-be-famous debate between Wendell Berry and erstwhile Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz.

It would have been interesting to have been in the room with Butz and Berry. The sound quality, especially during the question-and-answer period, was poor, and it was hard to hear the audience.

I came away wondering if Berry had won many people to his side that day, but “winning” was not his goal. He called for a return to the traditional values of democracy, neighborliness, kindness.

Through the years, he persisted in farming, speaking, and writing. His intimacy with the land taught him to take the long view.

That long view seems to be bearing fruit. Today, more people are asking some of the same questions that Berry had been posing for decades. What are we doing with this inheritance of land? Why are we doing it? What is the truest and deepest value of our actions?

Read all of “Butz and Berry in debate” by Joan Zwagerman at the Storm Lake Times Pilot.

The debate in question can be found HERE on YouTube.

“Earl Butz versus Wendell Berry” pdf (News that Stayed News: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly, orig. CoEvolution Quarterly, Spring 1978)

Though we shared time in Lexington and in the Patterson Office Tower on the university’s campus, Gurney was never officially my teacher. That said, as seen above in the ways he encouraged me to listen more intently, Gurney did provide some clear instruction, especially as I pored over his writings and documentaries to learn more about him, his influence, and his place in Appalachian literature and in bringing countercultural ideas to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Thus, I gladly count myself one of Gurney’s students. Unlike most of his students, I don’t write fiction. I do, however, write stories. And I remember vividly the moment in 2019 when I read Gurney’s “Storied Ground,” in which he insisted that “Stories are meant to be told and retold, again and again, not just by the original tellers but by others in a family or community who have recognized them as living treasures to be cared for and handed on.” As a historian, then, I learned from Gurney that it is okay to be one of those who is telling and retelling a story.

Read all of “Inside a Web of Love: Thoughts on Gurney Norman” by Richard A. Bailey at Front Porch Republic.

Through the eyes of Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry tells the story of 20th century rural America and how it changed from post-war industrialization and the “get big or get out” ideas espoused in American agriculture policy. He shares how it changed both the place and the people, often in a manner that they didn’t realize until it was too late. It is an extraordinary work, relatable to many of us who grew up in small towns. Characters will remind us of people that we know. The story of Port William mirrors so many other rural communities. Older folks will have witnessed a similar local arc, while younger ones like myself look at our local history and see the parallels.

Read all of “Reading Wendell, Part 1″ by James Decker.

Gurney Norman, an Appalachian writer who documented his native region with humor and love and became a beloved creative writing professor credited with mentoring numerous Kentucky authors, died Oct. 12 at the age of 88. He died peacefully of natural causes, said his wife, Nyoka Hawkins.

Norman was one of Kentucky’s “Fab Five”, a group of writers that included his friends Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, and the late James Baker Hall and Ed McClanahan. Like several of them, Norman traveled to California after receiving a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University in 1960.

Read more of “Gurney Norman, chronicler of Appalachia, member of ‘KY’s Fab Five’ dies at 88“

See also: “‘Kind and generous,’ Gurney Norman, Kentucky writer and teacher, dies at 88” by Jamie Lucke (Hoptown Chronicle, 14 October 2025)

See also: “Inside a Web of Love: Thoughts on Gurney Norman” by Richard A. Bailey (Front Porch Republic, 16 October 2025)

The Peace of Wild Things: Filmmaker Laura Dunn takes another look at Wendell Berry

I mean, he thinks that film, television, and the screen contributes to the decline of literacy. That it, you know, is a negative force in the world. I think that’s generally his perspective. I mean, that’s what he would say to me, but, you know, at the same time he has friends like [Kentucky author] James Baker Hall, who take lots of photographs and even make short films. And I know he worked on that beautiful ‘Wilderness’ book with [Lexington-based photographer] Ralph Eugene Meatyard. So he has a real respect for image-makers, photography in particular. But I think the moving image is really a different thing, and I think he’s watched it become so dominant in our culture and he thinks it deadens the imagination. He does. So he’s against the screen as a medium, number one. Number two, he often would say things to me, and I’m paraphrasing him, because I can only tell you the gist of what he says so perfectly, but basically that he didn’t want to be made an idol of, that, you know, he would say he’s not anything but for the people around him and for his place, that ‘I am my place.’ He didn’t want the story to fixate on him. And he also just hates being on camera.