Sabbaths

Sabbaths by Wendell Berry, 96 pages

Sabbaths, a collection of poems written between 1978 and 1986, continues Berry's familiar pastoral themes with an emphasis on rest, patience, and the sacredness of the world,

     The world as it was given for love's sake

     The world by love and loving work revealed.

As might be expected with works composed over the better part of a decade, the quality is somewhat uneven.  This validates the author's observation that, in the writing of a poem as in the culture of a field as in the nature of a man

     Wrong was easy; gravity helped it.

     Right is difficult and long.

And the first step, in art as in labor as in life, is to

     ... pray for clarity to see,

     not raw sources, symbols, worded powers,

     but fellow presences, independent, called

     out of nothing by no word of ours,

     blessed, here with us.